


sharpen your teeth (tell yourself that it’s just business)

by voxofthevoid



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Codependency, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, M/M, Mild Mindfuck, Painful Sex, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Spanking, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:40:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25843714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: Barnes knows what Rogers would like to hear.I remember you.He doesn’t. He has wisps of memory as insubstantial as everything else the chair took from his brain. They’re always accompanied by the taste of metal in his mouth.He stays because it’s safe, because Hydra cannot get to him here, because Rogers—still waiting for his dead friend to claw his way out of the Winter Soldier’s broken psyche—will go to the ends of the earth to find him if they do. There’s a strange security in this knowledge, but Barnes knows it won’t last. Rogers will only wait for so long, and Barnes cannot tell him that his friend died screaming in the cold.So he watches Rogers watch him, and Barnes doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he knows he has found it the first time he sees Rogers’s eyes drop down to his lips and dart guiltily away.Barnes pretends he doesn’t notice and unlike Rogers, he can act. The Red Room made him well, and the Americans could ruin only so much.He changes his act, a few weeks in. He starts looking back.-Bucky tries to play the long game.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 315
Kudos: 1042





	1. my soul's a sorry state (so come on down, you empty lovers)

**Author's Note:**

> This is fuckery dressed in fluff, so be careful. Pay attention to the tags and the summary. And as always, hmu on [tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/) if you want warnings/spoilers or just ask random stuff.
> 
> Usually, when I split a one-shot into 2, the chapters are of even(ish) length, but not for this fic. Chapter 2 is double the size of this one.
> 
> Art by ko—she’s a graphics wizard, and you can find more of her stuff on [her tumblr](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/)!

* * *

* * *

The first week is the hardest.

The Soldier has to remind himself constantly that the Captain is not his jailor, isn’t Hydra, that he’s the farthest anyone can get from Hydra and still be in this business.

It’s harder to remember that the Captain looks at the Soldier and sees a dead man, even though he makes it so obvious. It’s a liability, the Captain’s sentiment. The Soldier doesn’t think about that much, not then. He is too preoccupied with the voices in his head and the shadows at the corners of his eyes, every single one demanding that he return.

 _Obey_.

He doesn’t.

The Captain helps, with his soft words and careful movements, with reflexes that let him tackle the Soldier to the floor and pin him down while he thrashes. He is strong enough to match the Soldier, but his huge, powerful body is always firm and gentle over his, holding him down without hurting him, even when the Soldier’s fists and fingers leave bruises and claw-marks on the Captain’s easily marked skin.

The Captain talks to him until his voice overwhelms all others and his bright blue eyes burn away the shadows clinging to the Soldier’s vision.

He decides, after that grueling first week, that he will call himself Barnes.

-

It gets easier. It always does. Even cryo didn’t hurt as much, after the fifth or fifteenth time.

That’s when he starts watching the Rogers watch him. He’s not very subtle about it, but then, what can Barnes expect from a man who wears a star on his chest and calls himself Captain America? No, he is not subtle, but he is not unkind either. Barnes is used to the stares; the Tower’s residents seem fond of Rogers and somewhat concerned about the brainwashed assassin he’s sharing space with. Barnes has heard and overheard enough to know that Rogers wanted it like this, Barnes in a highly secure apartment instead of a highly secure prison.

He’s kind that way. Barnes never tells him that neither apartment nor prison can hold him, not for long, because that would invite the question of why he stays. Barnes knows what Rogers would like to hear.

_Because I remember you. You’re my friend._

Barnes doesn’t. He doesn’t even have enough data to fake it convincingly, only wisps of memory as insubstantial as everything else the chair took from his brain. They’re always accompanied by the taste of metal in his mouth.

He stays because it’s safe, because Hydra cannot get to him here, because Rogers—still waiting for his dead friend to claw his way out of the Winter Soldier’s broken psyche—will go to the ends of the earth to find him if they do. There’s a strange security in this knowledge, but Barnes knows it won’t last. Rogers will only wait for so long, and Barnes cannot tell him that his friend died screaming in the cold.

So he watches Rogers watch him, and Barnes doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he knows he has found it the first time he sees Rogers’s eyes drop down to his lips and dart guiltily away.

Not a subtle bone in his body.

Barnes pretends he doesn’t notice and unlike Rogers, he can act. The Red Room made him well, and the Americans could ruin only so much.

He changes his act, a few weeks in. He starts looking back.

-

He makes his move at breakfast, with predictable results.

Rogers goes very still at the first touch of Barnes’s lips to his. He stops breathing. Barnes doesn’t pull away. He stays there like that, their mouths pressed awkwardly together, right until Rogers lurches back with a shuddering breath. His eyes are very wide, points of blue in an expanse of shocked white.

Barnes looks away, lets his hair fall forward and hide his face.

“Sorry,” he says very softly. “I didn’t—I wanted—I’m sorry.”

The apology is calculated down to the minute details, from the tilt of his head to the nervous tremble in his voice. Rogers caves in less than the span of a breath.

Warm fingers wrap around Barnes’s right hand. Light pressure encircles his left wrist.

“Hey,” Rogers says, and his voice is shaky but his hands are steady. They always are. “I’m not—it’s okay, Buck.”

Something in Barnes unclenches at that soft, whispered _Buck_. Rogers wouldn’t call him that if he were upset. It’s always _Bucky_ then. Never James. Never Barnes. Never Soldier or Soldat. Barnes likes it this way. He can always tell when Rogers is the one speaking to him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, a little firmer than before, projecting embarrassment all the same. He doesn’t look at Rogers’s face. Not yet. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

There’s a long, telling silence.

“Can you tell me why you did it?”

There’s something like fear in Roger’s voice. He’s scared a lot when Barnes is around, but it’s never fear of him. For him, sometimes, but usually, it’s things Barnes decides he’s better off not knowing. He’s not sure he wants to know everything that pummels Rogers’s quicksilver mind when he looks at Barnes.

He contemplates his answer, though not for long. He has two responses prepared—one’s a statement, other’s a question—and not very long to choose between them. He meets Roger’s eyes fleetingly. They’re still very wide and brighter than usual. That decides him. The less heartache now, the better. He doesn’t want to break Rogers.

“Did you ever do this with—with him?”

Rogers’s fingers tighten briefly around Barnes’s hands but he controls himself quickly.

“No. Bucky, why—”

“Did you want to?” Barnes asks over him, and this time, he does look Rogers in the eye, with an expression that he practiced for an hour in the mirror.

Wide but determined eyes. Pursed mouth. Fear and anticipation all thrown together. Rogers can read him well, he knows that. In those first days, when Barnes barely remembered how to eat, Rogers read him so well it scared him.

But he is better now. And he is a good actor, though he doesn’t know if Barnes—the first one—was anything of the sort, whether Rogers could see through him.

It works now, in any case. Rogers just stares at him for a second, and when he answers, it seems torn out of him.

“Yes.”

It’s not a surprise, this answer. Barnes knew Rogers wanted to, just not whether they did, either in the war or in that time before which Rogers speaks of with a fondness that never seems to stop hurting him.

Barnes slowly curls his fingers around Rogers’s, linking their hands. Rogers’s breath stutters.

“I don’t remember,” Barnes says carefully, eyes not quite meeting Rogers’s. “I don’t know what he wanted. But now, I—I want it too.”

It hits Rogers like a bullet.

Barnes can see the impact; Rogers freezes up, a pained sound escaping parted lips. The tears he’s been trying so hard to hold back slip out, wetting the corners of his eyes. Barnes reaches for it, metal hand slipping out of Rogers’s slack grip. He can’t feel the warmth of Rogers’s skin or the wetness of his tears with these fingers, but what’s important is that Rogers doesn’t flinch away from the chill. He just stands there, letting Barnes touch his face with the same fist that broke his eye-socket once.

“Bucky,” Rogers says, and he sounds like his heart is breaking.

For a second, Barnes is tempted to push, just to see—but then he remembers his plan and how imperative it is that he stick to it. He takes his hand away and steps back, making sure that his movements are a little unsteady, just enough that Rogers will notice.

“Never mind,” he says, looking down again, summoning a tight smile that’s not hidden under his hair. “Bad idea, I’m not—not him, not who you want.”

“You are,” Rogers says almost before Barnes finishes. “Buck, you know I don’t think that.”

Barnes raises his head. When he speaks this time, he’s nothing if not honest.

“I don’t. I have flashes. Memories of memories, maybe. It’s not enough, I know.”

“There’s no enough,” Rogers says, frustration leaking through shock and everything else. “You’re you. That’s enough.”

The worst thing is that Rogers _believes_ that. He truly does. He thinks that if Barnes remains as he is, half a person more machine than man, for one year, two years, a decade, he’d still care for him, still protect him, still fight both friend and foe for him. He’s lying to himself, but god, it’s a beautiful lie.

Looking into those damnably blue eyes, Barnes can even understand the appeal.

He makes himself smile. The strain, this time, is real, and he doesn’t hide it.

“Thank you.”

That’s honest too.

Rogers is a good man. Barnes knows that; it’s why he’s doing what he’s doing.

Rogers’s expression crumples. He steps forward, reaching for Barnes who lets him, trying not to let his triumph show when those broad palms rise to frame his face. Some of his pleasure must slip through because Rogers smiles, small and wondering. It’s sloppy and dangerous, and Barnes doesn’t like that he can’t control himself as perfectly as he could if Rogers were anyone else, but then, that works in his favor in a way. It’s a double-edged sword, the ghost inside him that he doesn’t remember.

“We have to take it slow,” Steve says. “I don’t—Christ, Buck, I can’t fuck this up, not this.”

And despite the planning, the days and nights he spent thinking and rethinking, Barnes is still caught off guard. He expected Rogers’s resistance and his acquiescence, but he thought it would take longer, that he’d have to play his cards right over days, maybe weeks.

“Oh,” he says. “I—you want me?”

“Sweetheart,” Rogers says, and Barnes doesn’t understand how this man can see what he’s seen and still have so much heart. “I’ve never not wanted you. I just don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” Barnes says, because Rogers believes this too, he knows. “Tell me you mean it. That it’s _me_ you want.”

Rogers’s eyes widen, and Barnes knows then that he has him.

It’s a sweet and lingering kiss. Barnes lets Rogers take the lead and stands there, echoing the shock that froze Rogers earlier. He’s not surprised when the kiss doesn’t turn deeper, remaining a pair of closed mouths pressed together even when Barnes starts to kiss back.

Rogers pulls away with a soft sigh.

“Yeah?” he asks, with the voice and expression of a man who’s transcended reality a little.

He’s so easy. Barnes like it, smiling fondly at Rogers. He puts his hands over the ones cupping his face, slotting his fingers in between Rogers’s.

“Yes, Steve.”

He doesn’t use the name often, not out loud and not at all in his head. He doesn’t quite know why. He thinks of it—Steve, Steve, Steve. There are voices in his head that echo the name, and they’re not his own. But that’s fine. He’ll make it his own.

“We’ll take it slow,” Steve says again, seeming to have recovered a little. “Do this, um, properly? Be sure.”

“I’m sure,” Barnes says, and he speaks again before Steve’s frown can translate into words. “I know, I know. I do. We will. I just—I just want to be close to you.”

“Buck,” Steve says, choked. His hands slide down to Barnes’s shoulders, fingers digging into flesh and metal. “Can I?”

“Yes,” Barnes says, though he’s not quite sure what Steve is asking. There’s only one answer anyway.

It turns out to be a hug.

Barnes lets out a little surprised gasp when their bodies collide. There’s none of the tentative tenderness of the kiss in this. Steve holds him like he wants to merge them into one body.

Barnes works his arms out from between their bodies and slides them across Steve’s back, sinking into the embrace. His body knows Steve’s; not like that, not yet, but it knows his strength, his warmth.

Steve folds Barnes into him, and Barnes stands in arms that make him feel small, clutched against a body that can be a wall between him and the world, even Hydra, and thinks of safety.

* * *

* * *

Steve, it turns out, meant glacial when he said slow. It’s not that Barnes expected to be thrown into the closest flat surface and ravished—well, maybe he did, with the way Steve kept looking at him like he wanted to crawl inside Barnes’s skin and devour him from the inside. It’s not just lust; the man was clearly, tragically in love with Bucky Barnes and has transferred that wholesale to Barnes, but it’s not some pure, sexless love either.

Steve’s eyes are quick to flit to and away from exposed strips of skin whenever Barnes raises his hands or bends over for something. Barnes experiments a little, to be certain at first, and then he keeps doing it because it’s an interesting experience, wielding that kind of power over a man like Steve.

He's not sure how he feels about the whole institution of dating. He doesn’t like going outside much. He sees sniper nests at every corner, avoids surveillance cameras religiously, and never takes the same route twice. He once broke a woman’s nose because she was following him and he thought she was Hydra; turned out she was following him but belonged to what’s left of S.H.I.E.L.D. Hill wasn’t happy, but neither was the expression Steve gave her while looming protectively beside Barnes like a roiling storm cloud.

Point is, he’s not the best company for long, romantic strolls or dinner dates. Steve still tries, happily accompanying Barnes on long, meandering walks that are filled with silences that are oddly comfortable. They leap across rooftops and sneak through strangers’ backyards, and Steve seems to genuinely enjoy it. It’s not very Captain American of him, but Barnes has had some time to get used to the fact that Captain America and Steve Rogers are two distinct entities. He prefers the man, not the symbol, and not just because the symbol would have shot him in the head or thrown him into some deep, dark hole.

Captain America wouldn’t hold his hand with his own sweaty fingers and kiss him goodnight before bed, but Steve does. It’s all very chaste and polite. Barnes can’t imagine it does much for Steve. He never lets his hands wander during tight, crushing hugs and never parts his mouth for some of the more adventurous tongue acrobatics Barnes has taken to studying on the internet.

Still, he doesn’t quite get the appeal of dating. It’s fine because it’s Steve, but he thinks it would be boring otherwise. Bland and unpleasant. But it is Steve, so it’s alright.

Steve’s good and kind, and Barnes is using him, but he likes him. He wouldn’t mind spreading his legs for him.

Because that’s what he has to do. He did his research before he initiated that first kiss. Steve wants to take it slow, though, and that suits Barnes just fine. Steve can take the lead. Barnes only has to give him what he wants.

Barnes does find himself surprised by how much he enjoys physical closeness. It’s not that Steve never touched him before, but they were either casual—a clap on the back, fingers brushing, a nudge to the shoulder—or restraining—hands tight around flailing limbs, a body pinning another to the cold floor—and always, _always_ careful, like Steve was afraid of breaking Barnes with the tip of his pinkie when he should have been worried about the reverse.

This is different. Deliberate but not like before. Steve doesn’t hide his pleasure at having Barnes in his arms and when they part from their chaste, close-mouthed kisses, he’s always bright-eyed and grinning. Barnes welcomes the warmth and strength of Steve’s body. It makes him feel safe; he knows Steve would put a bullet in his own head before he hurt Barnes, knows that this terrifies Steve’s friends.

And he’s not surprised that they’re not happy when they realize what—or who—their good captain is doing.

-

Wilson has this way of talking that emanates both patience and exasperation. It fascinates Barnes, but he doesn’t much like being the source of it. He’s glad he’s not the target.

“This is a bad idea,” Wilson is telling Steve. It’s the third time he’s repeating those words. “I know, man, don’t give me that look. Just saying.”

“We’re taking it slow,” Steve says, for the fifth time.

Barnes mouths the words along with him. When he presses his hand to his face, he finds his lips curved up.

“Steve, I’m very glad you haven’t jumped into bed with your amnesiac best friend and brainwashed former assassin, but—Christ, I just heard myself.”

Steve lets out a very long sigh, his seventh in the last thirty-seven minutes since his and Wilson’s conversation strayed into dangerous waters. Barnes has been listening from the beginning, sitting with his back against the bedroom door. It’s the easiest he’s ever eavesdropped on a conversation. And Steve knows the range of his enhanced senses, he should really take this outside, but he has parked his ass in the couch with the same stubbornness that’s dripping out of his voice.

“He can decide what he wants, Sam,” Steve says. “And if he wants me, if this—I’d never say no. You know that. You’ve always known that.”

Wilson doesn’t say anything to that. But something must pass, nonverbal and weighted, because he gives a heavy sigh of his own the next moment.

“Come here, man,” he says.

More silence.

Barnes assumes they’re hugging. Steve gives good hugs. They block out the world.

“Just be careful,” Wilson says after a while, voice muffled like his mouth is smushed against something. “For both your sakes.”

“I will be. We will be. Thank you, Sam. For caring about him too.”

“I still don’t trust the guy, but you know, I tend to take people trying to kill me a little personally. Unlike some people.”

Steve laughs. The sound is warm. Barnes doesn’t understand how laughter can have such a physical presence. It should be just sound, washing over you. It’s never been like this before Steve. Hydra laughed too—cruel, casual, but it didn’t sink into the Soldier’s soul any more than the screams or pleas of his victims.

He’s not complaining, just confused.

Wilson doesn’t stay long after that. He’s the only Avenger who doesn’t live in the Tower. He has choice words for Stark’s tendency to collect his friends, but there’s no ill-will behind them. Steve seems to agree whenever Wilson talks about this, but Barnes doesn’t need to ask why Steve stays in the Tower anyway. _He_ is the reason. It’s one thing to house the Winter Soldier in one of the most secure privately owned buildings in America, perhaps the world, and another entirely to let him loose on the unsuspecting populace.

He does go out, but it’s always with Steve or Romanoff. No one stops him if he goes out alone, but the first time he did, he broke that woman’s nose and now his options are to silently put up with being tailed or let Stark put a subcutaneous microchip in him. When Hill told him to choose, Barnes politely said no to both. Steve broke a perfectly nice chair.

So now, he goes out with Steve or Romanoff. Steve says it’s not a permanent arrangement. _It’s only been a few months, Buck_ , he says. _I think they need more time. I won’t let it be too long, I promise._

Steve’s a very good man.

Barnes picks himself off the floor and moves to the bed, sprawling out on the soft cotton sheets. He’s not wearing anything but boxers, though it’s not particularly warm in their temperature regulated floor. He just likes to experiment and see which shade of red Steve will turn. The data will be relevant, that much he’s sure of.

Predictably, Steve enters the room a few minutes later and stops short at the sight of Barnes.

“Buck,” he croaks out, dragging his eyes away from Barnes’s bare chest with visible effort. “What are you doing here?”

“Lying down. Contemplating sleep.”

“It’s my room,” Steve points out like Barnes would have somehow missed that in their last eight months of cohabitation.

“Your bed is nicer.”

“We have the exact same bed,” Steve says, and he sounds strangled now.

His dick, under those tight jeans, looks strangled too.

“Your bed is nicer,” Barnes repeats.

“ _Bucky_.”

He smirks at Steve. He practiced this is the mirror for hours, moving his face this way and that, tugging at his lips with the tips of his fingers, but he wasn’t quite satisfied. But now, he finds that the expression comes naturally. Maybe he should tape a picture of Steve to the top of his bathroom mirror.

The effect is quite nice. Steve’s eyes are dazed as he stares at Barnes’s mouth.

He snaps out it after a few moments, his cheeks and ears tinged pink. They ruin the impact of the frown he directs at Barnes.

“I know what you’re doing,” he says.

Barnes blinks innocently at him.

“Tell me to leave and I will.”

Steve opens his mouth like he’s going to do exactly that and snaps it shut just as quickly. He runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up in unruly spikes. That and the stubble dotting his jaw make him look a little roguish, a little less polished.

“You can join me,” Barnes says. He stretches a little, faking a yawn, and bites back a grin when Steve’s eyes turn a shade darker. “We can sleep together. Oh, sorry, nap.”

Steve groans, but he’s smiling now, lopsided like he’s trying not to.

“Come on, Steve,” Barnes says, and the name does the trick.

Steve crawls into bed, pausing at the edge with one knee on the mattress. Barnes reaches out, fingers curling around the sleeve of Steve’s tee. He tugs, more a suggestion than anything, and Steve lets himself be pulled forward until he’s lying beside Barnes, propped up on one elbow. Barnes turns to his side so they’re facing each other and cups Steve’s face. Gleaming silver splays across Steve’s sculped jaw; he leans into Barnes’s palm like there’s nothing more comfortable than rubbing his cheek against cold metal.

Barnes kisses him, and Steve kisses back with a groan.

Steve tries, valiantly, to keep it chaste. He always does. And Barnes usually lets him, but he’s feeling—different, today, after overhearing that conversation with Wilson. There’s an itch under his skin that doesn’t abate until he curls his fingers in Steve’s hair and licks at the seam of his lips.

Steve makes a high sound, dripping need.

“Please,” Barnes whispers against his mouth, heart in his throat. He didn’t plan this, but—

Steve breaks, finally.

His mouth opens, wet and hot against Barnes’s, and it’s a shock of sensation, his teeth and tongue. Barnes has no memories of kissing anyone, just meticulous research of the ways people get down and dirty, but his mouth seems to know what to do. It’s easy enough, almost instinct, to part his lips for the slick slide of Steve’s tongue. Steve’s breaths turn harsh and ragged, and he clutches harder at Barnes, crushing their bodies together as his tongue maps out of the inside of Barnes’s mouth.

It should be gross, but Barnes’s gut turns hot and tight.

They sink into the mattress, arms and legs tangling, and whatever hesitance Steve has held onto all this time is nowhere to see seen in the way his fingers wind tight into Barnes’s long hair and sink bruisingly into his shoulders. Barnes gropes him right back, clumsy and aimless over clothes that do nothing to dull the heat of Steve’s skin. Cheap cotton gives way to rough denim. Barnes plucks at Steve’s waistband, contemplating whether to take it further, and then stops thinking for a little while when Steve’s teeth sink into his lower lip.

He moans, startled to hear that sound slip out of him.

Steve seems to like it, kissing Barnes harder, deeper, all that hunger unleashed. It makes Barnes’s decision for him. He slides his hand down lower and cups the bulge between Steve’s legs.

There’s an instant when Steve’s pure reaction. His hips jerk into Barnes’s palm as he bites out a breathless curse.

And then he remembers himself.

He grabs hold of Barnes’s wrist, and he doesn’t pull it back or to the side, but he does tilt his hips away, breath hitching. The kissing stops too, though Steve doesn’t go far, just enough that they can talk.

“Slow,” he says, his wrecked voice not doing all that great a job in supporting his words. “We’re, uh, fuck, we’re going slow.”

Barnes rolls his eyes and surges forward, pushing Steve flat on his back. He grips Steve’s thigh, deliberately close to where his dick is trying to poke a hole through his jeans.

“This is slow,” he points out. “I’m trying to save your dick from being strangled. Purely self-serving, of course. I’ll have use for it someday.”

Humor does the trick. It always does. Something about Barnes cracking jokes and laughing relaxes Steve like nothing else. Echoes, he assumes, of Bucky Barnes, but he doesn’t mind much. It’s nice to laugh and anyway, he likes hearing Steve laugh too.

“Noble of you,” Steve croaks out, the words ending on a shuddering sigh when Barnes creeps his hand along his thigh and lays it over Steve’s cock again. He plucks at the button, not teasing so much as suggesting.

Barnes doesn’t look away from Steve’s eyes and eventually, he nods. Barnes makes quick work of the button and the fly. Steve heaves a sigh, but Barnes is distracted by the sight exposed. Steve’s wearing underwear, but the thin white fabric does nothing to hide what he’s packing.

He slides his hand into the open fly and lays his palm over the warm bulge there.

“Buck,” Steve rasps, need and warning all mixed.

“This the serum too?” Barnes asks, still distracted.

His mind helpfully flashes through all the porn he’s watched, none of which did anything for him. But there’s something about the heat of Steve’s cock in his hand, even through a layer of fabric, that makes parts of him clench up.

Steve just gapes at him, expression one of scandalized surprise.

“Come on,” Barnes says, feeling oddly defensive. “Not saying you couldn’t be this—this, before the serum, but feels like that’d have broke your back? Or is that only a breast thing? I’m not sure, anatomy isn’t—”

Steve’s hand slaps harshly over his mouth. Barnes idly contemplates licking it. Steve’s still just staring, but Barnes doesn’t know what to make of his new expression. Whatever is written in his crinkled eyes and parted lips, it’s not unpleasant.

“Serum changed some things,” Steve says after a pause, taking his hand off Barnes’s mouth. The pink on his cheeks has darkened into a glowing red. “It didn’t add too much.”

Barnes gives Steve’s clothed cock a light squeeze. It swells more under the touch.

“Right,” he says disbelievingly, helpless not to envision future scenarios. He tentatively concludes that he won’t break anything that won’t heal.

He shifts his hand a little and finds a wet patch growing on the fabric.

“You’re kind of easy, aren’t you?”

It’s not news, but it feels good to say it and watch Steve’s eyes widen in a blend of amusement and indignation.

It happens very quickly. One moment, Barnes is half on top of Steve with a hand on his dick and the next, he’s flat on his back with Steve pinning his hands above his head. Steve’s face, hovering above him, is twisted into a wild little grin.

Barnes goes very still.

Realization seizes Steve the next second. Barnes can see it in the widening of his eyes and the sudden death of his smile. His grip starts to loosen, and Barnes makes his tongue move.

“Wait!”

Steve freezes, long fingers still wrapped around Barnes’s wrists.

Barnes breathes out. Steve has put his weight on him, and it’s a familiar pressure even though it’s been a good three months since Barnes last woke disoriented and half-mad, with no thought but to tear through the first body he found.

Steve is safe.

Barnes relaxes his muscles, one by one.

“Stay,” he says.

“Are you—” Steve cuts himself off before he can complete that. He looks into Barnes’s eyes like he’s trying to see through to his soul. That’s stupid. Steve doesn’t want that, not really, no matter what he thinks. “Okay. Good?”

Barnes sinks into the mattress. Steve’s weight settles more firmly on top of his. It’s pleasant, but it’s still a surprise when his own cock gives an interested twitch. It doesn’t react to much of anything, Barnes has found. Writhing bodies on a screen are about as effective as Thor’s exposed chest or the mini-skirts Romanoff wears when she’s playing secretary to Potts. His own hand elicits more of a response, sometimes, but he doesn’t feel the urge all that often.

He doesn’t mind though. He spreads his legs, lets Steve slot his body in between them. His hard cock is a line of heat against Barnes’s thigh, but he already knows Steve won’t let this go too far tonight.

“Kiss me,” he says.

Steve does with a sound that borders on grateful. His hands remain tight around Barnes’s, and it’s the kindest way he’s ever been restrained. Steve likes it; it’s obvious in the frenzy of his mouth and the sting of the bruises he sucks along Barnes’s jaw.

Barnes tips his head back, bares his throat, and basks in something like triumph when Steve sets teeth to his pounding pulse.

* * *

* * *

Romanoff approaches the whole thing from a very different angle.

“Barnes fight a bear recently?” she asks Steve.

Barnes, feigning sleep on the couch, perks up without moving a muscle. They’re in the kitchen, Steve and Romanoff, and he can hear them loud and clear.

“What?” Steve sounds genuinely confused. “No, why do you even…”

“Well, he looks like he got mauled.”

There’s a long, loud silence.

Steve swears softly under his breath. Captain America has quite the potty mouth.

“Ask what you really mean, Natasha.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” she says mildly, obviously unconcerned by the irritation in Steve’s tone. “You seem to get the message anyway.”

“How long have you known?”

“Few weeks.”

“Sam told you?”

“Steve.” Now she’s the one who sounds disapproving. “You know he wouldn’t. He didn’t need to. I could see it all over your face. Wasn’t sure who it was though. Figured it was a stretch that you finally took one of my suggestions. Didn’t think it’s Barnes that got you laid.”

“Half your suggestions died during Insight and more than half of them were Hydra,” Steve says, and Barnes can perfectly imagine the unimpressed expression he must be levelling at Romanoff. “And I didn’t—we’re not—goddammit, Natasha.”

She laughs.

“It’s not the sex then,” she says, laughter still coloring her voice. Between one word and the next, it vanishes. “Don’t know if that makes me feel better. You out of your mind, Rogers?”

“Natasha. Don’t.”

“You know it’s a bad idea. You wouldn’t be so defensive otherwise.”

Barnes wonders about that. Maybe, in any other situation, she would be right. But he gets the sense that whenever Bucky Barnes is involved, Steve turns into a very different beast from what his costumed cohorts are used to. They should know it just as well by now, but maybe they just don’t want to see it.

“I’m not—Nat, what are you trying to say?”

“That he’s not your friend from seventy years ago. He never will be.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

It takes everything Barnes has not to tense up. They can’t see him from the kitchen, but a delicate blend of decades’ worth of training and justified paranoia keeps his body still, his breathing steady.

“Yes,” Steve says.

Romanoff says nothing, but her skepticism is audible in the silence. Barnes matches it, though he thinks their reasoning is different. He believes Steve—believes that he believes it.

“Nat,” Steve sighs. “I don’t need him to be anyone but who he is. I don’t know if you think this is some—some weird, belated fantasy fulfilment for me, but I’d hope you know me better.”

“I do,” she says blandly, and if the accusation hurts, her voice doesn’t show it. “I also know how you get when it comes to Barnes.”

She does see it then.

“He’s my friend,” Steve says. “Even if he never remembers a goddamn thing. I want the person he is now, and I’ll love him no matter who he turns into.”

Barnes allows himself a faint, ragged breath.

“Yet, you still call him Bucky.”

That woman does not pull her punches. Barnes has seen enough of her relationship with Steve to know that in this case at least, she’s doing it out of love. If she ever turns this scrutiny on Barnes himself, it wouldn’t be so kind. That’s fine; it just means he’ll have to avoid it for a while longer, until Steve’s in a little deeper.

“He doesn’t mind that,” Steve says, and this time, he does sound defensive.

“Have you asked him?”

Steve’s silence is telling.

Barnes takes that as his cue.

He doesn’t leap off the couch the way Steve might have in his place. He walks to the kitchen silently, but of course, it doesn’t matter how softly his bare feet meet the floor. Steve can hear his heartbeat as surely as Barnes can hear his.

Wide blue eyes pin him to the doorway. In his peripheral vision, Barnes can see Romanoff also turning to look.

“I don’t mind,” Barnes says, not looking away from Steve’s stare. “Steve can call me whatever he wants.”

Romanoff doesn’t say anything. Barnes drags his gaze over to her. Her eyes are narrowed, lips thin, expression set into mild disapproval. He wonders if Steve knows that it’s not _Barnes_ she’s trying to protect.

“That so?” she says, the slightest hint of a challenge in her voice. “And why’s that? I wouldn’t want to be called dead man’s name.”

“Nat!”

“Shouldn’t you know?” Barnes returns calmly. “Natalia Alianovna Romanova is as dead as James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Bucky!”

Neither Barnes nor Romanoff turns to Steve. They stare at each other for long enough that Barnes’s eyes start to smart from dryness.

“Fair enough,” she says, not looking away.

Barnes blinks and looks at Steve, who’s standing by the counter with his gigantic arms crossed over his chest, glaring at the both of them. His eyes soften a little when he meets Barnes’s gaze. There’s a needless apology in them.

“I’ll see myself out,” Romanoff says, the earlier tension wiped from her voice as if it never existed, replaced by quiet amusement.

Barnes can’t tell whether it’s real or not. He wonders if Steve can. The answer seems to be yes, judging by the conflict raging on Steve’s face as he watches Romanoff walk away. She brushes past Barnes without looking at him, her pace steady and controlled.

“Go,” Barnes murmurs once she’s out of earshot. “I’ll be here.”

Steve shoots him a stupidly grateful look and runs after her. The door to the front space opens and slams shut. Barnes can vaguely hear the elevator ping. He drinks a glass of water and makes his slow way to Steve’s bedroom. He wasn’t lying. The bed here really is more comfortable. 

He takes a piss and perches on the edge of the bed, waiting.

Steve doesn’t make him wait very long. He’s frowning when he enters the room, and the expression doesn’t vanish when he catches sight of Barnes, but it does change to accommodate a more inviting emotion.

Barnes widens his legs and holds out a hand.

Steve crosses the room in all of one second. He steps between Barnes’s legs and takes his face between both hands. His thumb brushes a bruise his mouth left this morning. They’ve been necking a lot since that day, less than a week back, with Sam. Barnes is pleased to be able to declare that he likes kissing. He likes being kissed more—those times when Steve gets that look in his eyes and grabs Barnes and tries his best to suck his soul out through his tongue. It’s messy business, teeth and tongue in mouth and on throats, but that’s half the appeal.

Barnes likes to look in the mirror and think of how Hydra’s perfect weapon only had bruises, not love bites.

“She means well,” Steve says after a pause.

“She cares about you,” Barnes replies with perfect equanimity. “You should be flattered. I don’t think Romanoff is the kind to love easy.”

Steve flushes, and if Barnes didn’t know better, he’d think that Steve has feelings for her. But he does know better; Steve was hopelessly gone long before Barnes stared into his eyes wearing the face of a ghost.

What kind of heart does it take, to love a man until he dies and then love him after? What would Steve do to the world, if it took Barnes from him again?

Barnes leans his head against one of those huge, comforting palms, memories of fire flitting across his thoughts.

“Bucky,” Steve starts, but he bites his lips and shakes his head, looking almost tortured. “Did you mean it?”

“That I don’t mind?” Barnes gets better each day at reading Steve. “Yes. It’s my name, isn’t it? Even if I don’t remember.”

“Of course, Buck,” Steve whispers, eyes suspiciously bright. “Of course it is.”

Barnes closes his eyes. Bucky Barnes. He chose to be Barnes. Anyone polite enough to use his name calls him Barnes, except Steve, who calls him Bucky like he can’t think of Barnes ever being anyone, anything else.

That’s fine.

Barnes, Bucky, it’s all the same. And anything is better than being nothing. That’s what the Soldier was. Nothing, until Steve looked at a ghost and called him another ghost’s name. He breathed life into the Soldier, and he didn’t even know it.

Bucky opens his eyes.

“Only you,” he says. “Only you get to call me that.”

Steve makes a soft, gutted sound.

Bucky stands up. Steve backs up, though Bucky doesn’t let him go very far, pulling him close by the waistband of his sweats and sinking both hands into its flimsy pockets. Steve grunts when their bodies collide with a dull thud and instinctively wraps both arms around Bucky.

“You ever think they’re right?”

“Who?” Steve asks softly, prying his eyes off Bucky’s lips.

“Wilson. Romanoff. Any of your friends who’ve warned you off me when I wasn’t around.”

“Buck—”

“I’m not offended, don’t worry.”

“Maybe you should be,” Steve says, frowning, and isn’t that just like him?

“I don’t care what they think,” Bucky says honestly. “Only you.”

Steve closes his eyes, body trembling as he breathes.

“Sam would say that’s unhealthy.”

“Again, I don’t care what he thinks. Only you.” Bucky brushes his thumb, the flesh one, against the delicate skin under Steve’s eye. Brilliant blue peers at him. “And I don’t think you care either.”

“I should,” Steve says, and he doesn’t sound tortured so much as resigned.

“No,” Bucky tells him, titling his head to brush their mouths together, a tease and a promise. “You shouldn’t.”

Steve kisses him like a starving man.

Bucky opens his mouth and lets his body be tipped back, clinging to Steve’s shoulder and gripping his hair, clinging for dear life while Steve lets loose all the need and hunger that he keeps behind all that golden polish. The marks on his throat ache, healing already, bound to vanish in a few hours, already replaced by fresh bruises. Bucky can’t remember the last time he looked in a mirror and saw an unmarked neck. It’s a claim gentler than the scars marring his left shoulder and the expanse of his back where Hydra managed to find the right combination of drugs and violence to make the marks stay.

Steve heaves him up and Bucky wraps his legs around Steve’s hips, a rough exhale slipping past him at the ease with which Steve takes his weight. Steve doesn’t stop kissing him, doesn’t lose an ounce of his desperation even as he climbs on the bed and knee-walks to the center, all with Bucky wrapped around him.

They collapse on the mattress with graceless haste, bodies flush together. Steve’s hard already. He really is easy, and Bucky would say that a light breeze could set him off, except the truth seems to be that the lightest touch from Bucky could set him off. He doesn’t know whether that’s the serum’s doing or just Steve being Steve. His own body’s slower to spark up, but then, Zola’s serum is counterfeit, as his scars prove. But maybe it really is Steve, drunk at Bucky’s touch. He likes that, the power in it. It turns him into a creature that’s tender and cruel, running whisper-light hands across Steve face and kissing him sweet even as he grinds his leg against the bulge between Steve’s legs to torment him with what he’s decided he can’t yet have.

Sometimes, Bucky just wants to say Steve doesn’t have to wait, that time doesn’t matter when Bucky will give him whatever he wants whenever he wants it, but he has enough to sense to know how bad an idea that would be. He’s not going to ruin weeks of progress with impatience; he’s got a sniper’s heart, after all.

Steve tears his mouth away from Bucky’s to pant into his neck, hot and wet. His hips bear down with enough force to crush a lesser man’s bone, rutting madly against Bucky’s thigh. He angles it better, lets Steve half-fuck into the softer inner side, and Steve’s answering groan sends a bolt down his spine and curves around to coax his own cock to life.

“Bucky,” Steve says. “ _Christ_.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and he doesn’t have to fake the roughness in his voice. “I’m here.”

Steve sinks his teeth into the soft flesh of Bucky’s throat, tugging harshly before soothing the ache with his tongue. Bucky doesn’t hold back his whimper at the pain, but he pushes Steve’s head firmly against the ache, fingers tight in golden hair. Steve sucks over it, working the ache into a livid bruise. He loves doing this, marking Bucky up. Romanoff wasn’t wrong when she said he looks like he’s been mauled by a bear.

Steve was gentler at the beginning, but then an almost accidental scrape of teeth drew blood and found Bucky shuddering full-bodied, and it escalated from there. Bucky’s not as surprised as he probably should be to know Steve’s an animal in bed, but his own receptiveness surprises him.

Sharp teeth nip at his earlobes, and Steve growls, “Stop thinking.”

Bucky laughs, the sound startled out of him.

“Well, make me,” he says.

Strong fingers curl around his jaw and yank him into a wet, biting kiss. The angle makes his neck ache and Steve’s mouth makes his head spin, and it takes an embarrassingly short time to get Bucky panting for it, mouth open and slack against Steve’s. The whole time, Steve’s hips keep moving, hard dick sliding against Bucky’s thigh, a hot and insistent pressure. And Bucky’s cock rises in answer, fattening in his pants until he’s shaking from the needy throb of it. He’s not used to his own pleasure and the way Steve pulls it out of him with the same magnetic authority he carries to battle, like an outcome other than victory never even occurred to him.

The angle shifts, somehow, and their cocks slide together, and Bucky arches sharply off the bed.

Steve almost topples off him, but he steadies himself, pressing firmly down on Bucky as he does. He can take the weight, _god_ , he can take Steve, but the sharp bite of sensation between his legs just might kill him.

Bucky wraps both legs around Steve and when he grinds against him this time, he’s the one who throws his head back with a cry.

“Bucky,” Steve gasps, moving against, his body hot and liquid. “Fuck, fuck, is this, are we—”

“Don’t stop,” Bucky manages past gritted teeth. “Don’t—”

Steve moans and grabs Bucky’s hip with one hand, and he does—something, with his hips and his cock, and stars burst under Bucky’s lids. It’s never like this when he’s alone, and even that thought is dim under the onslaught of pressure.

Steve kisses his neck, bites his jaw, and slides his tongue into Bucky’s mouth, all the while they rut like mad dogs, and Bucky will never know whether it’s the catch of fabric against the wet head of his cock or the slick slide of Steve’s tongue against his own that does it.

He comes with a high-pitched whimper, spilling in his pants as his head blanks.

Everything stills.

Steve, tangled with him, is frozen, his mouth close but not on Bucky’s. The first thing he feels when his brain recovers is Steve’s breath, warm against his jaw. He opens his eyes and finds Steve’s, the blue a pale ring around gleaming black.

“You came,” Steve says, sounding stunned.

“Been a while,” Bucky replies, just as numb.

His head’s spinning, body thrumming with pleasure, but reason creeps in all too quickly and the warmth of his climax turns damp. He can feel Steve against him, still hard, and the face hovering above his is flushed with want.

Bucky pulls Steve down into a kiss, buys himself some time.

Steve doesn’t move, just kisses Bucky, hips stock still. His body’s tight with the effort, back muscles tense under Bucky’s idly roving hands. His mind’s racing. His pleasure wasn’t the point, will never be the point, and he knows Steve doesn’t mind, that he likes the reactions he can pull out of Bucky, but the part of Bucky’s brain that’s blaring _mission failure_ won’t shut the fuck up.

Steve pulls back, frowning.

“Buck, are you okay?”

Bucky smiles at Steve, small and shaky. He doesn’t lie, knowing it won’t work, not when he’s like this, but truth is a many-faced thing.

“Know it was fast, but first time it’s been something other than my hand that I—in a long time. Cut me some slack, yeah?”

Steve’s entire being softens. He kisses Bucky, mouth brushing gently against his brow, his cheek, the corner of his lips. Bucky turns into it, but Steve doesn’t deepen the kiss, just lingers sweetly for a few seconds.

He’s smiling when he pulls back.

“Was it good?” he asks, a little nervous.

“Better than my hand, no competition,” Bucky says honestly. A thought occurs, and he considers the implications for a second before he lets it loose. “You can fuck me any time.”

Steve grins, but his hips grind down, a brief, helpless motion.

“I’m glad,” Steve says. He kisses Bucky again, a quick peck on the mouth. “I want you to feel good.”

Every word drips sincerity, and it’s nothing new, but Bucky doesn’t quite know what to say this time. There’s a tightness in his throat that he can’t swallow past.

“I want you to feel good too,” he says in the end. That’s true too. “Come here.”

Steve allows a kiss, makes it wet and dirty, but he doesn’t resume rutting against Bucky. Soon, he gentles the kiss and pulls away, lifting himself carefully off Bucky, who’s too surprised to react.

“Where are you going?” he asks, alone in bed and bereft.

“Gotta get something to clean up with.”

“But we’re not—you haven’t come.”

“It’s okay,” Steve says happily. He looks it too, face flushed and eyes bright, glowing contentedly. “Next time.”

“But—”

Steve kisses him again, slow and good and deep.

“Next time,” he repeats and this time, it’s a promise. “I just—I wanna take care of you. Can I?”

Bucky can’t do anything but nod, a little dazed.

Steve slips out of bed and sight, but he emerges from the bathroom all too soon. He does exactly what he said he wanted to do. He strips Bucky with gentle, reverent hands and presses his lips to the bared skin without any real intent. He cleans him up too, wiping a warm cloth along the cooling mess left on his skin.

All of it leaves Bucky oddly lethargic, boneless and struggling to keep his eyes open.

Steve strips too, cock mostly soft now. He lies down beside Bucky and takes him into his arms. He pulls the covers over them, wrapping them into a comfortable cocoon.

“Steve,” Bucky calls, voice thick and tired. He forgets what he wanted to say.

“Ssh,” Steve says, running that big, warm palm down Bucky’s side and pulling out the last bit of tension his muscles were clinging to. “Sleep, sweetheart.”

Bucky’s helpless not to obey.

 _Mission failure_ , whispers that part of him that will never die.


	2. i start to spill (did you really think that you could fix me?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re both fools, thinking Steve’s love will fill up all the empty spaces inside Bucky, but there are worse lies to build an altar to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The warning about fuckery dressed in fluff bears repeating! Hit me up on [ tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/) if you’d like more detailed, spoilery warnings. 
> 
> The lovely art is by ko! Please give her some love @[ kocuria](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/)!

Bucky prepares for his second seduction with more care and more confidence than he did for the first. Pornography still does nothing for him. He tries to touch his dick to the frantic visuals of a pair of oiled buff men going at it but finds himself distracted over and over by concerns about the structural integrity of the massage table they’re defiling.

He gives up.

He closes his eyes and thinks of Steve, his warmth and his smile, the taste of his mouth and the heat of his touch, and that—that works. 

He rolls his balls in his free hand. The chill of the metal is a stark contrast to the warm hand wrapped around his cock, but he’s used to it. He tugs at his balls idly for a few seconds. The pleasure’s dull and present, but it doesn’t drive him out of his mind like the pressure of Steve grinding down on him. He abandons them to inch his fingers a little further down. The sensation is strange. He’s certainly touched himself there before, but he doesn’t think washing or wiping his ass after shitting counts as experience for what he’s about to do.

He pushes in the tip of a finger experimentally.

It burns and feels strange, his insides tightening unpleasantly around the intrusion. He keeps it there for a few seconds to see if anything changes. The immediacy of the pain recedes into a dull throb but that visceral sense of rejection remains.

Bucky huffs a breath and pulls it out. That stings too.

He’s supposed to do this slowly and with plenty of lubrication. He found enough articles and videos extolling the virtues of patience and lube that most of it’s burned into his brain.

But what’s the point? It’s a lot of trouble for him to do on his own; the most that will happen is that he’ll find out whether or not he enjoys it, which doesn’t matter because Steve will enjoy it and that’s the entire point. Steve will be gentle, Bucky’s sure of that much. He’ll try to make it not hurt.

Good enough.

-

Steve unwittingly makes it easier for Bucky to find just the right occasion.

He returns to their floor after an impromptu sparring session with Thor to find the rooms all dark. Tension coils in his pleasantly wrung muscles, and he creeps along the walls, ears and eyes intent on the faintest sound, the slightest shift in the shadows.

He finds both in the kitchen; Steve is standing, features illuminated by the burnt glow of candlelight, his shoes making light _tap-tap_ sounds on the floor.

The dining table in front of him contains a veritable feast.

Bucky stops hugging the wall and steps into view. It’s not often that he gets to sneak up on Steve, but he manages it this time, which is probably a testament to Steve’s distraction. He looks a little nervous, the smile he shoots Bucky shaky at the edges.

“Steve?” Bucky calls cautiously.

“Happy second-month anniversary?”

Bucky lets out a long, deliberate breath and wills his body to lose its tension.

“You’re a romantic sap at heart, aren’t you?”

Steve ducks his head, smile widening.

“Well, if you’re complaining, I guess I’ll eat all this delicious food all by myself.”

“I’ll knife you in your sleep, Rogers.”

Steve laughs. Bucky marvels sometimes at how he can laugh at those jokes. Bucky knifing him and punching him and hell, putting a bullet in his brain were all very likely outcomes during the initial stages of their acquaintance. Steve didn’t seem afraid even then. He slept unarmed and rushed to Bucky’s room at the first scream, throwing caution and common sense out the window. When he did show fear, it was _for_ Bucky, not of him.

Bucky strides into the room, coming to a stop on the opposite side of the table from Steve, who looks at him with wide, hopeful eyes, wearing his heart on his sleeve.

“Hey,” Bucky says.

Steve grins so wide that his face seems to split.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

Bucky has to swallow twice before he can speak and he doesn’t even know what he wants to say until he’s blurting some stupid shit.

“You didn’t make this, did you? ‘Cause your cooking can give any supersoldier food poisoning.”

“Fuck you,” Steve says, the last of his nervous tension draining out of him.

 _You can_ , Bucky thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

“Wouldn’t be very romantic,” he says instead, tracking Steve carefully as he rounds the table to stand beside Bucky. “You’d have to hold my hair while I puke my guts out.”

“I’d do it,” Steve says immediately, voice too damn soft for this.

“I know you would,” Bucky says, looking up and leaning in. “Like I said. Romantic sap.”

Steve kisses him, huge hands spanning either side of Bucky’s face and blocking out the world. It’s as sweet as it’s consuming, and Bucky goes a little weak-kneed at being kissed like that. He thinks it’s some strange and sadistic power that built human bodies to be so weak to the taste and touch of another.

Steve pulls back, peppering little kisses over Bucky’s hot face. It’s with visible effort that he takes a step back, and even then, he doesn’t let go of Bucky’s hand, not until he pulls out a chair and watches him sit down on it.

“Now you’re a gentleman,” Bucky teases, watching with no small amount of humor as Steve gracelessly lowers himself onto the opposite chair.

“Excuse you, I’ve always been a gentleman,” Steve lies without a hint of shame in that angelic face of his. “You were always the uncouth bastard.”

Steve’s got an odd idea of sweet talk when he’s comfortable enough, and Bucky can’t even counter with anything because he actually doesn’t know whether Bucky Barnes was the devil or the angel on Steve’s shoulder. But he’s reasonably sure that Steve’s lying through his teeth.

In the end, he settles for a vaguely belligerent, “Suck my dick, Rogers.”

Steve’s grin widens unsettlingly.

“After dinner, honey.”

Bucky walked into that one.

He looks down at his food, hiding his face in a curtain of hair.

-

Steve makes good on his word. He’s romantic about that too, kissing Bucky for a good twenty minutes in the kitchen until his lips are numb and his gym shorts are a little too tight.

When Steve finally takes him to bed and lays him out on it, Bucky says, “You could at least have let me change into better attire before ambushing me with a romantic dinner.”

“You look perfect,” Steve says, hearts in his eyes.

Bucky just shakes his head.

“You’re hopeless. Can’t believe Thor agreed to this.”

Steve stills and lifts his head from where he’s trying, with limited success, to pull Bucky’s shorts down with his teeth.

“Agreed to what?” he asks, not quite meeting Bucky’s eyes.

“Don’t even try, I know you roped him into distracting me while you set it up. Like hell did a thunder god just happen to drag me to a pummeling session.”

Steve grins, utterly besotted.

“You know me so well.”

There’s a wealth of meaning behind those words. Bucky hides a sudden flash of discomfort in an amused smile. Steve doesn’t notice anything amiss, smile turning sheepish in that adorable way he has.

“I wanted to ask Nat, but she had a mission. Thor was a last-minute idea. He was very easy to convince though. He’s, uh, very romantic.”

“Just as well you didn’t ask her. Have a feeling she’s got a few choice words to say to me.”

“That why you’ve been avoiding her?”

“Avoiding who?” Bucky asks mildly, and Steve just shakes his head, not losing his grin as he returns his attention to Bucky’s shorts.

Turns out that he doesn’t have the finesse to inch it down like that but he can—and does—tear it off with his teeth.

Bucky lets out a soft curse at the display of strength. He’s thought, quite a few times, maybe too many times though there’s no such thing, not really—anyway, he’s thought about why Steve’s strength gets to him so bad. It shouldn’t, not when it’s a clear disadvantage for Bucky. Hydra needed adamantium shackles and ice coffins and regularly administered electricity to keep him dazed and complacent. Steve can do as much with his fists and his mouth.

Half the appeal is that Steve won’t. The other half is that he can.

Bucky doesn’t really try that hard to understand his brain. Some sleeping lions are better left alone.

And then Steve puts his mouth to Bucky’s cock and his brain briefly exits the picture. It blinks back online when he pries himself out of the relentless eddies of sensation, telling himself that he has to focus, that he has a mission.

Pleasure is still a complicated concept, hard to get used and harder to endure. He wants it, his whole body burns with wanting it, but he doesn’t know how to handle it, and Steve—Steve knows what he’s doing and more than that, he loves doing it, and he takes precious little time to shatter Bucky’s composure. It’s hard to remember what he’s doing, why he started this, when Steve makes him drown and feel like he never wants to resurface.

But he does, clawing himself out of that hole, heaving with the effort. Steve’s happily going at it between Bucky’s legs, hair falling into his face as his head bobs up and down. The visual wreaks a whole new sort of havoc on Bucky’s head and dick, so he closes his eyes and breathes through it. He’s helpless not to fuck up into Steve’s mouth, but Steve takes it, takes him, opening his throat to let Bucky in deeper.

The orgasm is torn out of him by the constricting heat of Steve’s throat. Bucky whimpers through each piercing pulse, shaking apart under Steve’s touch.

Steve sucks him even as he softens and turns oversensitive, until even the heat of his mouth is more pain than pleasure. Bucky’s whimpers turn high and hapless, and Steve pulls off, running both hands soothingly along Bucky’s thighs and stomach.

Bucky sinks into the mattress, limbs loose and warm, more thoroughly worn out than even the most grueling mission ever managed. He thinks he’s being unfair by giving this self-imposed mission so much gravity. Pretending to love Steve is the easiest thing he’s ever done.

“Good?” Steve asks, and though his smile says he knows the answer, the anxiety in his eyes is just as genuine. He asks almost every time, and Bucky’s answer is always the same, in content if not in words.

“Think you swallowed my brain,” he says, and he doesn’t even need to act to sell it. The hoarseness of his voice and the soft edges of his words are all real. “You’re always good.”

Steve grins, proud and pleased. He goes to take himself in hand, probably to jerk himself off over Bucky. He likes doing that. He also likes Bucky’s hands—hands plural, the flesh and metal seemingly equal in Steve’s eyes, even when it comes to his cock. Bucky hasn’t yet put his mouth to him; he isn’t quite sure how. He thought he’d learn from Steve, but the instant Steve’s mouth touches his, Bucky’s higher brain functions die. He’ll brave that one day, but for now, it’s easier to just spread his legs.

“Wait,” he says, and Steve stops immediately. Bucky meets his eye and licks his lip. “I want you in me.”

The words hit Steve like a freight train. He shudders, breath leaving him in a gasp. The hand he’s got on Bucky’s thigh clenches hard.

“I—are you—”

“If you ask me if I’m sure, I’ll kick you in the dick.”

Steve laughs, looking startled at himself.

“We don’t have any, uh, stuff.”

Bucky gestures wordlessly at the bedside table. Steve blinks before crawling up the bed to root through the first drawer. When his hand fishes out a full bottle of lube, his expression is one of surprise.

“I didn’t put that here.”

“I did,” Bucky says, and now, it’s Steve’s who looks dazed, like Bucky managing to stash sex supplies in his room is his greatest shock of the evening.

“You going to sit there and look pretty or are you gonna do something?”

That snaps Steve out of it.

“Pushy,” he complains, grinning like it’s not a complaint at all. “Impatient much?”

Bucky just smiles. It doesn’t waver.

Truth is that he’s—nervous isn’t the right word. He’s not worried about the actual act of fucking. Whatever Steve gives him, he can take it. Even that monster cock. The pounding of his heart and the twisted knots in his gut are caused by something else.

It’s anticipation, of a sort. He’s been preparing for this since the first time he saw Steve’s gaze linger on his lips and thought, _I can use that_. His data has evolved since then; he knows, now, that Steve doesn’t want a tight hole on his cock, he wants Bucky—Bucky Barnes, the Soldier, this new, living, thinking thing he’s turned into. All of them and any of them are, as far as Steve’s concerned, his Bucky. It’s the kind of devotion that makes men do great and terrible things.

Bucky wills his thoughts to quieten and his body to relax. He spreads his legs and smiles wider, invitation etched into every inch of him.

Steve nearly falls off the bed in his haste to climb back over Bucky. They kiss, rough and messy. Steve’s mouth tastes like come, like Bucky, strange and sharp.

Steve draws back and swallows, throat clicking dry. Bucky leans in and licks up the sweat gathered there, tongue tingling at the salt of his sweat. Steve makes a soft, pleased sound.

“Have you—have you done this before? No, wait, I mean—”

Bucky waits patiently for Steve to finish his thought though he’s reasonably sure what he’s really asking.

“Do you remember doing this?” Steve asks in the end.

Bucky knows the answer, but he pretends to think about it, more for Steve’s sake than his own. Steve has these moments where he prompts Bucky and looks so damn hopeful in the following silence before the answer wipes that joy clean. He always rallies fast, understanding and apology softening his features.

 _Sorry_ , he will say. _I shouldn’t have asked_.

 _It’s alright_ , Bucky will say. _I understand_.

Then they’ll smile stiltedly at each other. Though these days, they kiss instead and at least that’s never awkward.

But this situation is a little different, isn’t it? Does Bucky remember getting fucked? Of course not. He doesn’t remember ever having sex. He has flashes though, of a woman’s soft breast cupped in his hand and a skinny, golden-haired boy’s bare back. He remembers staring at the knobby line of his spine.

He thinks he knows who that boy is, though Steve before the serum is a sight he has only seen in pictures.

“No,” Bucky says eventually. “I don’t remember sex before you.”

Steve goes very still. Then, he lets out a slow, shuddering breath. He kisses Bucky on the cheek, dragging his lips down to his jaw and along the stubbled curve of it until he finds his mouth and tries to breathe all his love into it. Bucky opens up, takes it in. They’re both fools, thinking Steve’s love will fill up all the empty spaces inside Bucky, but there are worse lies to build an altar to.

He bares his throat for Steve’s wet mouth and sharp teeth, sighing with each mark that’s sucked into his skin. Steve kisses a heated path down his chest and stomach, pausing to lave his tongue over all the spots he knows will make Bucky whine and tremble. He kisses the base of Bucky’s soft cock too, nuzzling playfully into the thatch of dark hair there.

Bucky just watches him, reacting, never acting.

Steve runs his hands up the insides of Bucky’s thighs, the touch gentle and reverent. Bucky spreads them wider, satisfied when Steve’s breath hitches. But it’s his turn to gulp in air when Steve puts his mouth there instead of his hands. He sucks burning marks along Bucky’s thighs. The skin there is soft, sensitive, and the hard muscles under it tense helplessly at the heat of Steve’s mouth.

Steve’s gentle, relentless, and it threatens to unravel Bucky.

“Don’t tease,” he chokes out, shocked to find himself on the verge of tears. “Steve.”

Steve raises his head and pins Bucky with the most tender smile.

“Alright, Buck,” he murmurs. “Turn around for me? Easier like that. I don’t want to hurt you.”

He turns around, gathering a pillow close and collapsing on it, back arched and ass up. Steve swears at the sight, sudden and vehement, and there’s hunger in his fingers as they span across Bucky’s ass and squeezes the supple flesh. It feels good, warm skin and firm pressure. It’s good when Steve spreads him wide too.

“Christ,” he says. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”

Odd words to be directed at someone’s asshole, but Steve’s a little weird when it comes to Bucky. It’s endearing in a way. His words are followed by the tentative press of his thumb to Bucky’s crack. It drags along the sweat that has gathered there, and Bucky’s face burns hot because that’s—gross, sort of. Strange. Steve’s touch is marked with anything but disgust.

“Can I?” he asks, and now, he’s the one who sounds desperate.

“Yes,” Bucky says, relieved to get on with it. He can’t breathe through this scrutiny—It ties him into knots. “Fuck me, come on.”

Steve makes another of those strangled, desperate noises. A quiet snick of a cap follows. When Steve’s touch returns to his hole, it’s wet and a little cold. Bucky doesn’t hiss at the chill and carefully breathes through the burn of Steve’s finger.

“This okay?” Steve asks anxiously. 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, voice calm. He clenches around the finger and screws his eyes shut at the weird intrusion. “I won’t break, you know.”

“Asshole,” Steve says fondly. “I don’t want to hurt you, that’s all.”

“Sap.”

“Only if you have low standards.”

Bucky chuckles, hiding a grimace in the pillow. He does have low standards, but no matter how low the bar, Steve would have leaped over it, he knows that for sure. He lets out another, slow breath and forces his muscles—all of them—to release the tension they’re desperately clinging to.

“That’s it,” Steve says, his slick finger sliding in another inch. “Open up for me.”

Bucky shivers at that, something—something about that tone of voice tugging at his gut, not unpleasantly.

Steve’s finger slides in to the knuckle. His everything is big, but it’s still a kinder penetration than Bucky’s ill-advised experiment with his left hand.

“Move,” he says because it’s awkward, lying here with a finger in his ass.

Steve does, gently moving it in and out, crooking it every other thrust like he’s trying to feel up Bucky’s insides. It doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t hurt after the initial burn fades. It’s mostly just strange. His body’s giving him confusing signals, clenching up like it wants to push Steve out and ease that bruised feeling deep inside.

“Another,” Bucky says.

Steve rubs the rim with a second slick finger.

“You sure?” he asks. “You’re tight.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says, voice light and airy. Steve swats his ass in retaliation, and the sensation makes him jolt and whine.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Steve whispers, and he sounds damn near worshipful. Bucky doesn’t know much, but he knows he doesn’t deserve that. He clenches around Steve again and breathes through the pressure.

“I’m sure,” he says, and he makes sure he sounds it too, all sweet and breathy. “Give it to me.”

Steve, bless his gentle soul, is only a man. Bucky’s no expert on how to human, but even he knows that it takes a lot to resist when someone you’re head over heels for is waving their ass in the air and begging to get fucked.

It’s more of a stretch this time, more of a burn too. Bucky can’t hold in his noises this time, but he turns every tight, shocked sound into needy whines and whimpers, and he shoves his ass back into Steve’s fingers, taking him deep even as fire licks up his spine.

It gets easier after a few minutes, and then he’s asking Steve to add a third.

The pain isn’t anything, really. It aches, yes, but his is a body that was sculpted, with meticulous deliberation, to withstand a lot of damage. And Steve’s trying so hard not to hurt him, to be gentle, that all Bucky has to do is be a little more patient and let himself adjust to do away with the pain entirely.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t want to. And he can’t quite say why, so he tells himself it doesn’t matter.

Steve fucks him with three fingers for a long time—or for what feels like a long time. Bucky’s mind unspools a little, time becoming less real, everything a velvet-red haze. The pain drips away, replaced by a slow, building pleasure. Steve’s fingers feel good, rubbing wetly against his insides and spreading out to make Bucky ache somewhere deep.

Bucky finds himself panting into his pillow, every noise unfiltered and real.

Steve’s voice eventually penetrates his pleasant haze.

“Buck? Bucky, sweetheart, you with me?”

“Mrmgh,” Bucky tells his pillow.

Steve laughs and pulls his fingers out, infinitely gentle. Bucky raises his head to warble a protest at him.

“I know, I know,” Steve says, and Bucky doesn’t know why he’s the one who’s breathless. “Turn around, honey.”

It takes Bucky a few seconds to figure out how limbs work, but he manages to flop over to his back. Steve presses a kiss to one of Bucky’s knees, mouthing at the flesh there. It’s an absurd show of affection, and Bucky can’t look away from him.

“Think you can ride me?” Steve asks.

“Huh?”

Steve peers at him for a second, then breaks into a smug grin.

“Ride me,” he repeats. “Take it at your pace.”

Bucky blinks at him, the words and their meaning slow to sink in.

“And,” Steve adds, grinning like a demon, “I want to watch you move.”

“Pervert,” Bucky manages to say after a long pause, his voice a choked gasp.

Steve’s unbothered and presses one last, lingering kiss to Bucky’s knee before moving to lie down on the bed, one arm folded under his head like an asshole. Bucky just lies there gaping at him for a few seconds before laboriously pushing himself into an upright position.

“Want me to help you over here?” Steve asks, guileless save for that mad glint in his eyes.

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, straddling Steve and snatching the lube off the bed. “Better idea, fuck me.”

“That’s the plan,” Steve agrees, hungrily watching Bucky spread slick over his cock. He’s had Steve is his hand before, but not quite with these intentions. He spends a few moments just feeling the length and girth of it. He tries to imagine it inside him, but he can’t, not really. He had Steve’s fingers, but his cock is longer and thicker and just…more.

“Nervous?” Steve asks, reaching down to wrap his hand over Bucky’s. “You know we don’t—”

“Shut up,” Bucky says, not unkindly. “What, you don’t want to fuck me?”

Steve’s eyes turn a shade darker.

“Never wanted anything more in my fuckin’ life, Buck.”

Bucky tries to smile like this is news to him.

“Then hush and let me do the work. Lazy.”

“Hey—” Steve starts, but he cuts off with a harsh breath when Bucky rises further and maneuvers himself onto Steve’s cock. The fat head prods at his hole, hot and _huge_. So huge that there’s no way it will except that it will, it has to, and Steve has put Bucky on top, so he can’t lie there and think of Jesus while Steve shoves it in. He has to do this, he has to—

Bucky holds his breath and slams his body down.

He doesn’t scream. Seventy decades of torture is useful for some things.

Steve does, throwing his head back with a shout that makes the room tremble. He moves too, jolting Bucky’s precarious position atop him. He falls forward, instinctively bracing his hands on Steve’s chest to remain upright. The graceless change in position makes him shift on Steve’s cock, which pulls at his insides like a burning hook.

Bucky blinks away his tears and keeps breathing through his nose, slow and anything but steady.

Steve gropes at his legs with both hands, long fingers curling into Bucky’s thighs. Bucky can’t tell whether he’s clinging for his own sake or trying to reassure Bucky, but it helps anyway, giving him something else to focus on except the searing stretch inside of him.

The fingers were nothing. This _burns_.

“Bucky,” Steve chokes out, eyes fluttering open, their blue all but gone. “Christ, honey, you—are you—does it—”

“It’s okay,” Bucky lies. He takes his right hand off Steve’s chest and cups his face. “It’s a lot, you ain’t got anything to compensate for. But I can take it. Is it—is it good for you?”

Steve groans like he’s dying.

“Yes, fuck yes, you’re—” Steve shudders, fingers carving bruises on Bucky’s skin. “So good, Buck.”

Bucky leans back, settling deeper on Steve’s cock. It fucks him up and he doesn’t hold back a whine, Steve pets along his legs in response, and Bucky can’t tell whether he’s trying to soothe him or just feeling the heat of skin.

“Move,” he tells Steve.

“Take your time,” Steve answers, voice strained but smile bright. “Let’s—adjust a little.”

Bucky will have to do the moving then. He’s always found it easier to rip off a band-aid than peel it off slow, not that he often had injuries that warranted anything as trivial as band-aids. Walking on a broken foot with half his rib cage shattered doesn’t make a very good analogy though.

Still, he allows himself a few seconds to just sit there and breathe. Steve feels bigger inside than he did in Bucky’s hands. It’s an insane stretch, too long, too wide, too _everything_. Bucky swallows and feels choked, like Steve has pierced all the way through him.

He grits his teeth on a groan and starts to move.

Steve gasps as Bucky’s body drags up his length, and Bucky throws his head back so Steve won’t see the tears swelling in his eyes. It’s fire and pain, a flood of scorching sensation, but Bucky’s had worse, he’s been forced into worse, and this, at least, is his own choice.

He slams his body back down, and he still doesn’t scream, but that doesn’t make it easier.

That changes, sooner than he thought when he first impaled himself on Steve’s dick. His body proves, again, that it can take just about anything. The sharp, searing pain simmers into a dull throb, _present_ but not overwhelming, freeing enough space in Bucky’s head for him to hear the low whines spilling from his lips, only to be drowned out by Steve’s loud, ragged breaths. His hands are tight on Bucky’s legs, gripping his thighs, his hips, fingers sinking deep before palms smooth soothingly over tight, sweat-slick muscles.

The touch is grounding despite everything. Bucky focuses on that, sinking into the surety that Steve’s _got_ him, that he won’t let go, that it won’t matter if Bucky fucks up. He won’t, he can’t, but it’s good to know, and god, he wishes he were a better, kinder man.

He fucks himself on Steve with renewed frenzy, and Steve’s harsh cry rings in his ears.

“Bucky,” he’s saying, repeating the name like a mantra. “Bucky, Bucky, _Bucky_.”

“Steve,” Bucky gasps, leaning further back to brace his hands on Steve’s bent legs, using the leverage to go at it faster, harder. His vision turns white at the edges, and he shuts his eyes tight.

One of Steve’s hands leave Bucky’s hip and wraps around his cock. It’s soft, and he’s glad Steve made him come first because at least he can say that’s why. But then Steve starts stroking; painful pleasure screws into Bucky’s gut, and he has to reach over and slap Steve’s hand away, panting all the while.

“Not yet,” he manages to say. “Let me do this.”

“Buck—”

“Please,” he gasps, and that works, always does. “You wanna help so bad, fucking _move_.”

No one will ever say Steve Rogers is not capable of rising to a challenge. The problem, as seems to be the general consensus, is that he’s a little too good at it. This isn’t news to Bucky, but the determined twist of Steve’s expression yanks that knowledge to the forefront of his mind.

Steve fucking moves.

Bucky has a single, incandescent instant to be glad that he’s got both hands braced on Steve when the first thrust almost sends him toppling to the side. Then, Steve drives in deep, and Bucky’s thoughts scatter into a sea of white.

It’s hot and hard and brutal, Steve’s cock fucking him open over and over and over, forcing Bucky’s tender insides to clench impossibly hard around him. He stops moving, legs turning to jelly, but it doesn’t matter because Steve can take his weight and take him too, hips bucking harsh and wild, hands keeping Bucky firmly on his cock.

Bucky lets himself scream this time, clinging to Steve with clawed fingers.

It’s not even pain anymore, it’s just sensation, a wild vortex of heat and pressure.

And then Steve does— _something_. Bucky doesn’t even register the change until lightning races up his spine. He lets go of Steve’s thighs and sags forward. Steve catches hold of him and stops, whole body stilling.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, fingers stroking Bucky’s sweaty hair back from his face.

“Do—do that again.”

Steve blinks at him. His eyes are dark enough to drown in, even when understanding brightens their depths. He shifts his hands back to Bucky’s hips, one by one, and Bucky grabs hold of the headboard this time, holding tight even when the carved wood groans under the pressure.

Steve pulls out—no, he pushes Bucky _up_ , forcing his body off his cock. Tears blur his vision, and he screws his eyes shut before any can fall on Steve’s face.

Steve fucks up into him with one, rough thrust.

Bucky screams, sharp spikes of pleasure twisting his gut.

“Fuck,” Steve swears, voice slurred like he’s drunk, drowning.

He keeps thrusting. Bucky falls apart.

He realizes, half lost in this new, electric haze, that he’s moving too, now, slamming his body down to meet each of Steve’s thrust, opening up without thought or question for the piercing heat of his cock. And it feels—it feels so good, razor-sharp and fever-hot, like everything in him is catching fire.

The headboard splits in two.

Steve growls, an animal sound like nothing Bucky has ever heard from him, and flips them over. He bends Bucky in half, the muscles of his leg burning as they’re pushed to his belly, his hole aching at the sudden emptiness. Steve, hovering above him, looks like an angel robbed of his halo, golden and glowing.

“Fuck me,” Bucky begs, and he’s drowning too.

The bed creaks in warning when Steve rams back into him.

Bucky arches off the bed, back bent sharply, hips kept high by Steve’s bruising grip and unyielding cock. It pulls out and fucks in, over and over and over, until Bucky’s mewling incessantly, pleading for things he can’t voice.

The bedframe breaks and Steve slips out, and the burning sting of the head popping free of his rim sets Bucky off.

He comes, the pleasure sudden and consuming, dick jerking as it shoots all over his legs and chest. Steve says something that’s more breath than word and drags Bucky down the lopsided mattress to slide back into him.

“Can I?” he asks, already half in, and Bucky doesn’t know to answer with anything other than the tight clench of his hole.

Steve shoves in deep with a soul-deep groan and spills, wet and hot.

There’s a moment of utter stillness.

The bed gives another groan and the mattress dips another few inches, making their joined bodies lurch together unpleasantly. Steve pulls out gingerly, both of them making hushed noises at the separation. There’s a moment where it seems like he’ll collapse on Bucky, but he topples to the side instead. The bed doesn’t seem to appreciate that, but at this point, there’s not a lot of damage it can do.

“We broke the bed,” Steve says, voice hollow with disbelief.

“We broke the bed,” Bucky agrees. He doesn’t give a shit. He’s still in shock from his orgasm. He came without a hand on him, shaking to pieces from just Steve’s cock, and that’s—Christ, he doesn’t know what to do with that information.

It’s good, objectively. Fucking Steve would be infinitely more pleasant if Bucky is to enjoy the fucking, and clearly, he does, initial pain aside. Even that can be avoided if he chooses to, though something tells him he won’t.

This mission, this— _thing_ he’s got with Steve, it’s shaping Bucky into something new. A creature the Winter Soldier wouldn’t recognize. A man Bucky Barnes never saw in the mirror.

He used to know where this path led, but he doesn’t, not anymore.

Steve’s arm encircles his waist, pulling Bucky close against him. He kisses his neck, his jaw, his lips, rushed little things made frantic by love, not lust. Bucky melts for it, can’t help it, and he realizes, the way he should have much earlier, that the danger isn’t in not knowing where the path leads but in no longer caring where it leaves him.

-

Bucky wants to say Steve’s the one who gets all sex-crazed after that, but the truth is that they’re both equally bad.

They christen all parts of their floor. JARVIS takes to restricting guest access to the front door to protect the Avengers’ innocent eyes from watching their pure and untarnished captain spewing filth as he nails Bucky to any available flat surface.

And Bucky—god, he’s hungry for it, can’t help it and can’t make himself want to, and he tries, once or twice, to go back to the hard-edged determination of when he grit his teeth and drove his body down on Steve without a care for pleasure, but it doesn’t work when he _knows_ what it feels like when Steve hits that spot just right and keeps on hitting it until Bucky’s a drooling wreck on his cock.

They get a new bed, reinforced this time. They break the couch too, but they buy another, sturdier one. Steve’s the one who has to field the questions, and he handles it about as gracefully as expected, but that’s its own entertainment. No one probes very far; Steve’s team collectively seems fascinated and horrified by the fact that he fucks.

Bucky likes that side of him—likes that he runs his mouth, likes that he can’t keep his hands off Bucky, likes that he’ll yank his hair when they kiss and bent him over the couch with his hand firm on Bucky’s throat.

As if sensing Bucky’s thoughts, or maybe just the tightening of his body, Steve screws in a little sharper, fingers digging deeper into Bucky’s hips, grinding against bone. Bucky’s kneeling on the floor with his torso draped over the couch. It still smells overwhelmingly new, almost but not quite enough to overpower the scent of sex.

Steve’s open mouth presses against the back of Bucky’s neck, his breath heating the flushed skin there.

“Close,” he says, as if Bucky’s can’t tell by the uncontrolled frenzy of his thrusts.

Bucky clenches his ass around him, answer and permission both, and Steve shoves in deep with a ragged groan. He gives a few more thrusts, each one pushing in deep. His teeth sink into Bucky’s nape as he finally comes, spilling hotly inside. Bucky’s cock, limp and covered in its own release, throbs sharply with each pulse of Steve’s climax.

Afterward, Steve doesn’t pull out, just slumps over Bucky, letting him take their combined weights. He huffs softly but doesn’t collapse, and it’s pleasant in a strange sort of way, being sandwiched between Steve’s sweat-soaked body and the poor, abused couch.

“Christ,” Steve says once his brain cells reassemble themselves. It always takes a few moments. “What do you _do_ to me?”

Bucky wants to reach over and swat him but can’t find the energy to so much as twitch a finger.

“Think ’s my question,” he says, slurring just a little.

Steve rubs his big, dumb face against Bucky’s throat and shoulders. He’s got a little stubble these days, and the bristles scrape against Bucky’s bruised neck and scarred shoulders, the sensation strange in ways he can’t describe. It’s not unpleasant, not at all.

“Can’t get enough of you,” Steve whispers like a confession. “You don’t know how—god, Bucky.”

Bucky turns his head, just enough that they can kiss, the angle awkward and messy. Steve’s tongue swipes wetly over his lips, and Bucky’s gut clenches with a dirty thrill.

“I know,” he says, nipping at Steve’s lips. “Can feel it real well.”

Steve chuckles, a hoarse, fucked out sound. He pulls out, very gently, and the hot slide of his soft cock and the sting of the head popping free make Bucky tighten around nothing, keenly aware of the sudden emptiness in him.

He stands up, and Bucky contemplates the same before deeming it too much effort. He melts into the couch a little more, sighing when muscles at his back twinge in relief. He doesn’t get to stay like that long before Steve bends down and hauls him upright, barely letting Bucky find his feet before scooping him into his arms.

Bucky clings to him on instinct, but the flash of not-quite-fear dissipates in an instant because Steve’s arms are strong and secure around him, holding Bucky close to his chest like it doesn’t even take effort. It’s the sort of display of strength that makes Bucky’s stomach swoop each time, and he can’t quite decide whether he should be embarrassed by that or not.

Steve kisses him, still walking, still holding Bucky like that, and Bucky’s thoughts die a whimpering death.

-

They settle into an oddly domestic routine. The Avengers stop looking at Bucky like they want to give him the shovel talk of the century but are legitimately concerned he’ll stick a knife in their throat if they tried. Bucky personally thinks they should worry more about Steve’s reaction to them threatening Bucky, which was the whole point in the first place, but the only person who seems to truly realize that is Romanoff, and Bucky makes sure to avoid being alone with her with due diligence.

S.H.I.E.L.D stops sending their agents to stalk him when he leaves the tower.

Fourteen months after letting Steve catch up with him, Bucky joins the Avengers on a mission. His uniform’s blue, and Stark scraped off the red star on his arm, and when Bucky ties his hair back and looks at his reflection, he doesn’t see the Winter Soldier looking back.

He doesn’t wear a mask to the field. He doesn’t have a codename.

He has Steve’s voice in his ears, barking orders, and it’s the most natural thing in the world to follow him into the fire.

There’s no news of Hydra, no venomous head hissing at them, a threat and a lure. Complacency pulls at Bucky; it would be the easiest thing in the world to just forget what he was and build a life with Steve, but he knows exactly one thing about peace.

It never lasts.

-

He wakes to a warm weight on his back and a hand in his hair, tangling gently in the long strands.

“Mm?” he asks his pillow, higher brain functions slow to flicker to life.

A familiar pair of lips press to his nape and drag wetly down the knobs of his spine. And even half-asleep, Bucky’s body is quick to react, blood rising to a sweet simmer.

Steve mouths his happy way down Bucky’s back. There’s less teeth than he usually goes for, but each time his mouth opens to breathe hot against Bucky’s skin, he becomes a little more awake. He’s naked, as he usually is these days while sleeping, the potential vulnerability in case of an attack discarded because for one thing, he can kill most people with his bare toes, and for another, the heat of Steve’s skin on his is worth a bullet or two to non-lethal areas.

This is another perk—Steve’s hands groping down his thighs while his face nuzzles at the small of Bucky’s back.

Bucky surfaces from his pillow with a little gasp.

“Good dream?” he rasps, voice thick from sleep.

A quick glance at the alarm clock shows it’s barely past four so it hasn’t been more than three hours since they fell asleep, warm and sated. He’s no stranger to being woken up in the morning by Steve’s dick and wandering hands but this is new.

“Got a mission,” Steve says, and just like that, Bucky’s wide awake, body thrumming with tension. “Ssh, no, honey. Not you. Just me, Nat, and Clint. Quick and dirty. Gotta leave in a couple of hours and wanted to say goodbye properly.”

Bucky makes a displeased noise and tried to turn over to his back, but Steve makes a persuasive for him remaining on his stomach, namely his hands kneading the cheeks of Bucky’s ass with very clear intent.

“Kind of you,” Bucky says, sinking back into the mattress. “Doin’ me a favor, huh?”

Steve laughs, low and rough, the sound skewering Bucky right in the gut. His cock twitches to life with supreme interest in the proceedings.

“Ain’t I?” Steve asks, rubbing his baby beard against Bucky’s cheeks. It’s the oddest kind of sting and makes him jolt, a little shocked. “Know how you get, Buck.”

“F-fuck you.”

“S’the idea. Wanna try something new. You gonna let me?”

Steve’s already spreading Bucky’s ass wide like he knows the answer, and it’s arrogant and very infuriating but also fucking accurate because Bucky would lay himself out and let this man do anything to him, trust him to play Bucky like a stringed instrument at the hands of a master.

He expects fingers, Steve’s cock, a toy like the ones they ordered online recently, but what he gets is the bristles of Steve’s beard rubbing against the tender skin on the insides of his cheeks.

Bucky damn near bolts upright, but Steve’s holding him down good, hands tight on his hips and face pressed firmly between Bucky’s cheeks.

“Oh,” Bucky gasps, realization dawning. “ _Steve_.”

He’s come across this. He came across a lot of things on the internet when he went looking for tips and visuals on how two men got it on, but he discarded most of them as things he’d never do or have done to him because Steve didn’t seem the type, and Bucky’s little self-assigned mission was—is, fuck—all about Steve. But the thing about making predictions about Steve Rogers is that the bastard breaks every one of them; it’s just that Bucky didn’t consider that in terms of eating ass.

Steve’s breath falls on his hole, hot and teasing.

“S-Steve, Steve!”

Steve hums, half a question in the sound, but he seems more intent on rubbing his face all over Bucky’s ass, beard doing a number on the sensitive skin there. The bristles catch on his hole, a stark contrast to the soft brush of Steve’s lips, and Bucky forgets all his words.

He remembers them, moments later, when Steve’s tongue flicks out to trace the rim. Bucky shouts, sheets tearing under hands he didn’t know he clenched so tight.

“Steve,” he whimpers, and Steve’s response is to do it again, and it takes every ounce of willpower Bucky possesses to force his tongue to form words. “W-wait, you shouldn’t, it’s—Steve!”

Steve actually pulls back. Not far, just enough that he can utter a deceptively light “Oh?”

Bucky’s whole body burns ten degreed hotter.

“It’s—you—it’s dirty there. You shouldn’t…”

That’s as far as he gets before his throat clicks dry. Steve’s no help, still crouched over his ass, hands on both cheeks, leaving Bucky no choice but to replay the fleeting sensation of his mouth on his hole again and again and again.

He wants it back, he wants it, but he—

God, he’s _shy_.

“Aw,” Steve says like he _knows_. “I’m the one who dirtied it up, sweetheart. S’fine.”

“That’s not—I don’t think that’s how assholes work, Steve.”

Steve laughs, mouth close enough to Bucky’s hole that he can feel his hot breath there. He tries, unsuccessfully, to not shove back into it, needy in precise opposition to his words.

“Look at that,” Steve says, all laughter drained out of his voice to be replaced with a familiar, dark hunger. “You like it, Buck?”

Bucky buries his face in his pillow. Steve, undeterred, slides one of his hands up to tug at Bucky’s hole with his thumb. It’s playful and a little rough, the sensation slithering like quicksilver up Bucky’s spine.

“This little thing likes it,” he says, and the sound Bucky makes is inhuman. Steve’s a filthy fucker, and sometimes, he makes Bucky’s brain short circuit. “You want more. You gotta tell me, sweetheart. Come on. Tell me you want it.”

If Steve asks in that tone, there’s nothing in this world Bucky won’t surrender to.

“I want it,” he chokes out, face still half-buried in the pillow.

“Yeah? You sure, honey?”

“Steve, Steve, _please_.”

“Ssh,” Steve murmurs, pressing wet kisses to the top of Bucky’s ass. His mouth slides lower, and he speaks with his lips moving against Bucky’s crack. “I’ll give it to you, sweetheart.”

His mouth opens, wet and hot, against Bucky’s hole. He stifles a shout in the pillow. His fingers rip larger holes in the sheets.

It’s a messy business; Steve uses lips and tongue and _teeth_ , wet suction followed by faint sting, and it all feels so good, blanketing the whole of Bucky with electric ropes of sensation. He shudders each time Steve laps at his whole, shouts when his tongue slides inside, and dissolves into hapless whimpering when his teeth catch at the rim. It’s unlike anything he’s ever felt, and it pulls him apart within seconds.

He's not even aware that he’s grinding his dripping cock into the mattress, all of him narrowed to the touch of Steve’s mouth at his hole, until his pleasure flares into a bright, hot ball in his gut, seconds before Steve’s tongue crooks inside of him and sends him crashing over the edge.

Bucky doesn’t quite have the breath to scream. He gasps soundlessly into the pillow, head and vision blank as Steve licks him through the aftershocks. He doesn’t stop until Bucky’s whining and trying weakly to squirm away from the relentless assault of his mouth. Steve sighs, breath falling gently on Bucky’s twitching hole, and pulls back with an oddly tender kiss to it. He squeezes Bucky’s ass, comforting and groping.

“Good?” he asks, the smug bastard.

“Hngh,” Bucky tells his pillow.

Steve’s laugh warms him anyway, pulling his lips into a reluctant smile. Then, one of those huge hands slides between his cheeks to rub two fingers against his wet, open hole, not pushing in but making no secret that he can, that he wants to. Bucky’s gut gets all twisted up again, an unlikely mixture of exhaustion and want.

“Think you’ll fall asleep if I fuck you?” Steve asks because he can read Bucky’s body terrifyingly well.

“Maybe,” Bucky says, turning his head to the side. He wants to look back and see Steve’s face but turning his head would take too much effort. “S’fine. You can keep going if I do.”

Steve responds with a sharp intake of breath. He likes that. Bucky likes that he likes that.

“Blow to my ego,” Steve says, as if that will cover up the keen interest in his voice.

“You’ll live. Got too big an ego anyway.”

“Can’t help it when you’re so easy, honey.”

Bucky reaches back for a half-hearted swat that finds only air.

“ _You’re_ easy,” he grumbles, and it’s not a lie. “Hurry up and fuck me before I fall asleep.”

Steve laughs. The sound of rummaging follows, followed by familiar wet sounds. Bucky briefly contemplates lifting himself onto all fours but figures that’s unlikely when he can barely summon the energy to look over his shoulder. Some nights, it feels like his body has had a belated realization that it spent seventy years in a glorified refrigerator and only got an induced mockery of sleep and is now making up for it by passing out the moment it hits a mattress. The only things that wake it up are Steve and his huge cock.

They sure do the job now.

Fingers slide in, opening Bucky almost perfunctorily, and he lets himself be soothed by the nice, rocking motions. His body’s all loose from his orgasm, and Steve fingering him is pleasant but not the sharp, demanding pleasure that hooks deep into him and tears out reactions that just egg Steve on. This is gentler, almost lulling, and Bucky closes his eyes and nuzzles happily into his pillow—right until Steve’s cock replaces his fingers.

It's impossible, then, to focus on anything but the hot, solid length prying him wide and sliding in deep, making Bucky take more than he ever thought possible. There’s always that moment, with Steve, when it seems like he’s stretched Bucky to his limits, filled him up so much he can’t possibly take any more, but he always can, tight muscles giving way for those last two inches.

By the time Steve bottoms out, Bucky’s wide awake and panting.

Steve drapes his body along Bucky’s back, hips grinding in sooner than either of them is ready for. Bucky keens, half-blind from the pressure, and Steve gasps against his shoulder, mouthing along the flesh, whispering nonsense. Teeth sink in, a sharp pain that makes him tighten feverishly around Steve’s cock. Steve moves again, withdrawing a little to thrust back in, and he does it again and again, rutting into Bucky without ever really pulling out, keeping him full while he fucks him.

Bucky’s whole body goes weak and shaking, seized by relentless waves of dull pleasure.

“Gonna miss me, Buck?” Steve asks, grunting between words, his forehead sweaty where it’s pressed between Bucky’s shoulder blades.

“Hah—ah?”

“When I’m gone,” Steve says, and it’s not fair that he’s so fucking articulate. “Won’t be around for a week or so, pal. Who’s gonna dick you down, huh?”

“Jesus _Christ_.”

Steve takes that as his cue to pick up his face and screw what’s left of Bucky’s mind into another reality.

-

An hour later, Steve’s in uniform. It’s not the red-white-blue eyesore that grates at Bucky because of how obvious a target it makes Steve but the dark blue stealth suit. These days, Bucky can’t quite tell how much of his appreciation for it comes from the tactical advantage and how much is just—as the internet calls it—pure thirst.

Steve catches him looking and grins. He comes over to where Bucky’s perched on the edge of the bed and steps between his legs, smile widening when Bucky spreads his legs to accommodate him.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Steve says, thumbing the corner of Bucky’s lips. “Why the long face?”

Bucky blinks. He wasn’t even aware his expression was particularly displeased.

“Nothing,” he says automatically. Then, he hesitates and adds, “You’re sure it’s not Hydra?”

Steve’s expression softens with understanding. Bucky looks away because he can’t stand being looked at like that for too long.

“Intel says otherwise,” Steve tells him, stroking Bucky’s face without commenting on his averted eyes. “Even if it is, it’s fine. Better to sever another head.”

“They’ve been quiet for a long time.”

 _Ever since you found me_ , Bucky doesn’t add.

“Yeah. Maybe they’ve accepted that they lost. Stranger things have happened.”

Bucky just snorts. Steve traces the edges of his grimace with his forefinger. It tickles a little, but Bucky leans into it anyway, nipping playfully at the finger. He kisses the tip gently, lingering unsubtly.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Steve says.

“No. You won’t. Said it yourself. Gonna miss getting dicked down whenever the mood strikes me.”

Steve laughs. Bucky hungrily grabs the memory of that sound and wraps it around himself—something to keep him warm until Steve comes home.

He walks Steve to the roof. The Quinjet is waiting, presumably with Barton and Romanoff inside. Steve takes a step away from Bucky before whipping around and yanking him into a tight, crushing hug.

It’s raw and physical, and Bucky doesn’t know what he will do for a week without Steve to touch and be touched by. Steve has left him in the tower and went off on missions before, but not very often and not for long. He doesn’t think he cared as much before either, though there was always a sense of anxiety with Steve’s protective presence gone. It’s worse this time, fiery hooks of worry dragging him this way and that.

Even now, months since Hydra’s tendrils last touched his mind, Steve is sometimes the only real thing in Bucky’s world.

“Come back safe,” Bucky whispers into Steve’s shoulder, hyperaware of the invisible eyes on them. “I’ll miss you.”

“Not just my dick?” Steve jokes, about as situationally aware as a rutting elephant.

“Shut up and kiss me goodbye.”

“Ain’t goodbye,” Steve says, but he kisses Bucky long and hard. They pull back panting, still clinging to each other. “I’ll always come back to you, Buck. It’s the way I’m built.”

Thick heat seals Bucky’s throat and robs him of words, even air. He kisses Steve, a quick peck on the lips, and steps back before he can do something monumentally foolish like follow him into the Quinjet.

Steve nods, once, and turns on his heels, marching away from Bucky like a good toy soldier.

The shield gleams dully in the early morning light, red like freshly spilt blood.

-

Bucky spends the next three days in a state of near-constant irritability. Wilson visits on the third evening, and Bucky grits his teeth against the wave of ire that accompanies JARVIS announcing his name.

“Let him in,” Bucky grunts, stalking to the kitchen in the name of good-host duties.

Wilson’s silent presence looms in the doorway for a long time before Bucky turns to him with a platter of warm cookies and chocolate milkshakes. Steve prefers fruit products to lactose, and Bucky’s long since lost any reservations in calling him a heathen to his face.

Wilson blinks at the food that’s suddenly being shoved in his face.

“This is the most aggressive way anyone’s ever fed me,” he says very carefully. “Steve didn’t mention you were a stress baker.”

“Shut up and eat the fucking cookies.”

Wilson hesitantly takes a cookie. He bites into it like he fully expects to be poisoned, and Bucky watches him just long enough to see the surprise break out across his face. Then he turns away and sets about cleaning up.

“I haven’t snapped,” he says, rubbing vigorously at some dried batter. “The lot of you can calm down.”

“Barnes,” Wilson says mildly, “it’s been over a year. I think we’re past that.”

Bucky spares him a disbelieving glance over his shoulder and says nothing. Wilson shrugs. He’s got his serious-adult face on, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the cookie crumbs around his mouth.

“Fury doesn’t count,” he says. “He wouldn’t trust his own reflection.”

Bucky returns to his cleaning. But Wilson is patient and just stands by quietly, steadily demolishing Bucky’s cookies and washing them down with the milkshake. Bucky tries not to listen to the sounds of him eating. It reminds him of Steve, who’s got a gaping void for a stomach and the table manners of an ogre. Anything Bucky makes, he’ll finish within minutes, and it’s as flattering as it’s disgusting.

It's been a long three days.

He gently sets a bent metal spoon on the counter and unclenches his fingers from around the distorted metal.

“Why are you here then?” he asks Wilson without turning around.

“Man, you’ve been cooped up in here for days, I got worried.”

“You live in D.C, how do you even know what I’m doing?”

“The group chat.”

Bucky turns around very slowly and pins Wilson with his best glare. It’s satisfying to see him flinch, but Wilson’s made of stern shit and is quick to recover. It’s a little infuriating that he shows as much by shoving an entire cookie into his mouth. Steve manages to make it seem more endearing, but Bucky’s long past pretending that’s an objective evaluation.

“The group chat,” he repeats flatly.

“Avengers group chat. Tony tried to add you, but Steve gave him his disappointed Dad America face and Tony caved under the pressure of all his daddy issues.”

Bucky takes several long seconds to process…that.

“Is Steve in it?” he asks in the end, deeming that the safest question to ask. If there’s one good thing about spending most of his time in close proximity with the Avengers and no one else, it’s that he feels shockingly normal occasionally.

And then he remembers he essentially tricked Steve into a relationship and the feeling vanishes.

“We keep adding him,” Wilson says. The cookie platter is half empty now, and he’s slowing down. “He stays for a couple of days and then leaves. It’s not his thing. Probably thinks it’s not your thing either.”

“It’s not,” Bucky says, startled into honesty. “Steve knows that. Knows me.”

Wilson gives him a piercing look.

“Alright. Still, you don’t gotta hide in here when Steve’s not around. Get out a little. Hell, come visit me.”

“And do what?” Bucky asks, more bewildered than anything now.

Wilson shrugs and sets down the platter on the table with a regretful pat on his belly.

“I don’t know, Barnes. People stuff. Doesn’t all have to be aliens and killer robots. Or fighting.”

“Sparring,” Bucky corrects. “I don’t fight Steve’s friends.”

Wilson blinks and ever so slowly raises one hand to grind the heel against his forehead.

“This is why I stay in D.C,” he mutters, probably not expecting Bucky to hear. Louder, he says, “That’s the point, Barnes. We don’t have to be just Steve’s friends. We can be yours too.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. Wilson tries to make meaningful eye contact and then visibly gives up with a sigh and a rueful smile.

“Forget it. You mind if I hang around? Tony’s tinkering with my wings, and if I have to field one more question on whether I want bulletproof underwear, I might just cave.”

“Thought you came here because you were worried about me,” Bucky says, and Wilson’s eyes go comically wide.

Bucky’s helpless to resist the upward tug on his lips. It’s his first smile since Steve left, and somehow, he’s not very surprised that Wilson pulled it out of him. Wilson shakes his head with a huff.

“Fine, I lied,” he says, grinning now, bright and wide. “I have a life, buddy, can’t drop it to run here every time one of you lot forget how to be functional human beings.”

“You’d never leave.”

Wilson laughs, a short bark of a sound. He seems surprised the next second.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he agrees, smiling. He’s warm too, in a different way than Steve in that it doesn’t slide under Bucky’s ribs to nestle close to his heart. “So what about it, can I stay or not?”

Bucky considers it.

“Sure,” he says on a whim. “You can stay.”

-

Wilson leaves the next morning, and Bucky lies down to sleep. He pretended to, the whole night, but couldn’t, hyperaware of the alien body in the room that used to be his own before Steve gave up pretending that he didn’t want to fuse his entire being with Bucky’s.

It takes him a while even without Wilson, body and mind reorienting themselves.

He buries his face in one of Steve’s running tees that he fished out of the laundry pile and inhales the scent of him, pretending Steve’s there, holding Bucky tight as he waits for sleep to take him.

-

He wakes to JARVIS’s crisp voice raised in simulated urgency.

“Sergeant Barnes, please wake up! Sergeant Barnes!”

Bucky rolls out of bed and lands on his feet, body lowered into a defensive crouch.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, rising, confused when he finds the room empty and the apartment quiet of even human heartbeats. “Attack on the tower?”

“Captain Rogers has been hospitalized. Condition critical. You’re his emergency contact.”

Bucky straightens slowly, mind blank and numb for a single, blissful second before white noise explodes in his ears.

He breaks the bedroom door rushing out.

-

“He’s alive,” Stark says quietly, the second Bucky stalks to a stop beside him.

“Injuries,” he barks.

“Shot thrice, one punctured his lungs, the other grazed his femoral. Heavy concussion. Broken ribs, broken toes. They’re opening him up in there.”

Bucky stares blankly at the blinking red sign on top of the door.

“It was an ambush,” Stark says, and he doesn’t quite seem all there. “Hydra. They—they went for Barton first, but they lost interest in him real quick.”

Bucky’s blood runs cold.

“Me,” he says. “They wanted me.”

“The mission needed a skilled sniper,” is all Stark says.

Bucky stares at the red light and thinks of the light reflecting off Steve’s shield.

“How did you get here?” Stark asks, staring at Bucky now.

“Bike. Steve’s.”

“JARVIS, huh.”

It’s not a question, and Bucky doesn’t bother with an answer.

“The others are banged up pretty bad. Not as bad as Steve. But then they don’t have his regeneration. Doc says anyone else would have died.”

The metal plates on Bucky’s left arm recalibrate with a loud whirr. Stark sucks in a startled breath and takes a healthy step away from him. He starts fidgeting soon enough. Bucky’s expecting it this time when he breaks the silence.

“I’ll go check on Barton. You—uh, you’re staying here, right?”

Bucky nods.

“Yeah,” Stark says, almost sighing. “Yeah.”

And then he’s gone, and it’s just Bucky and the red light.

-

Steve’s a pale, bruised mess on the hospital sheets. He’ll live. Someone else wouldn’t have, except maybe Bucky. Or Thor, but then, Thor’s not like the rest of them. The doctors don’t know when Steve will wake up; his physiology is alien to them. But Bucky knows that when he does, he won’t regret having thrown himself at the enemies to buy time for Romanoff to drag Barton out of it.

He's a protector, Steve Rogers. And Bucky knew that even back when he was half a person with no thought in his head except survival. That’s why he let Steve find him.

That’s why he saw Steve looking and lured him in with a kiss.

The door opens. Bucky knows by the uneven gait that it’s Romanoff, limping but avoiding her crutches. Her face is a colorful mess, one eye socket broken. Her bright red hair makes her seem pallid, almost sick, but she’s still a kinder sight than Steve’s too-still form.

“Hey,” she says, coming to stand beside Bucky.

He quietly vacates the sole chair in the room so she can sit and perches on the edge of the bed instead, laying one hand on Steve’s ankle over the hospital sheet.

“How is he?” she asks.

“Stable,” Bucky says. “They don’t know when he’ll wake up.”

“They never do. Cho says the sleep is his body healing itself. Prioritizing.” She’s looking at Steve, grey-green eyes intent on his face. “It was the same after you left him by the Potomac. Hours of surgery and doctors who didn’t have the slightest clue what to do with a supersoldier. We didn’t even have Cho then.”

Bucky blinks at her, but she doesn’t drag her eyes away from Steve. It’s no coincidence that she brought up the time _Bucky_ put Steve in the hospital. Yes, he pulled him out of the river, but he shot him thrice and beat his face in first.

“Something you want to tell me?” he asks eventually, not interested in playing the waiting game, not right now.

That earns him direct eye contact. She’s got a piercing stare, but it doesn’t screw deep the way Steve’s does because Steve puts all of himself behind those bright blues of his. Romanoff always holds her own soul back.

“I had a few,” she says after a while, still looking at him. Bucky looks right back, calm and blank. “You had to stop hiding from me eventually. Didn’t think it would be like this. Now I don’t know what to say.”

“Why? You’re not the kind to run out of words easily.”

She chuckles, the sound exhausted and humorless.

“Maybe I’m just tired of having friends almost die on me. I don’t have many of them, you know. I thought it might have been you, what killed Steve in the end. But look at you now—when did you last sleep? Eat?”

Bucky doesn’t bother dignifying that with an answer. She clearly doesn’t need one.

She smiles, faint and a little sharp but not cruel, and turns back to Steve, reaching out with one deceptively delicate hand to stroke the hair out of his face. Her blunt nails linger briefly on the fading bruise on his jaw.

“He pulls us in,” she says, soft like a secret. “Even people like you and me. And we don’t know we’re in too deep until it’s too late.”

Bucky’s chest clenches tight. He can’t speak.

Romanoff doesn’t seem to expect him to. She gets up laboriously, and a part of Bucky wants to lean in and help her, but he’s frozen in spot. She smiles at him and this time, it’s almost kind.

“He’ll be happy to see you when he wakes,” she says.

Bucky swallows twice and finally finds his tongue.

“How’s Barton?”

“Bad,” she says plainly. “But he isn’t critical anymore. And he’s survived worse.” She nods at Steve. “We all have.”

She turns to leave, patting Steve’s hand a final time. Bucky watches her go. In the washed-out hospital gown, she is small in a way she never seems to be despite her stature. Her presence seems drained, leaving someone human and breakable in its wake. Bucky’s sure it won’t last, but it’s unsettling to see all the same.

Once she’s gone, he turns back to Steve, and that’s no more pleasant a sight, but Bucky can’t look away, terrified he’ll miss the moment when Steve’s pale lashes will flutter open.

-

A hoarse groan startles Bucky out of disturbed, restless sleep. He jerks away and instantly regrets sleeping in the chair because serum sure didn’t make him immune to these assorted cricks and aches.

Then he registers what he heard, and the discomfort flees as if it never existed.

Steve’s breathing through parted lips, expression screwed up into something tight. Bucky watches with his heart in his throat; Steve’s been out since he, by Romanoff’s account, passed out in the Quinjet from a nasty combination of blood loss and head injury.

His eyes are bright and aware the second they’re open, which is anything but natural. Healing sleep; it makes as much sense as anything else about the serum.

Bucky finds himself pinned to the spot by Steve’s stare. He can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think.

“Hey,” Steve says and reaches out with one shaking hand, and Bucky jolts to life with a gasp.

He grabs Steve’s hand, rising from the chair frantically enough that it topples to the floor. Steve doesn’t seem to notice, wide eyes flitting all over Bucky’s features, drinking him in like _he’s_ the one who just crept back from the edge of death.

“Bucky,” Steve says, voice an utter wreck.

“Water,” Bucky mutters, more to himself than to Steve. “Where’s the damn—”

He doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand as he pours him a glass of water. His left arm doesn’t shake on the bottle or the fragile paper cup, but the rest of him is trembling, shaking—quietly falling apart. Steve’s fingers tighten over his like he’s trying to keep Bucky together, and it’s stupid because he should be the one who—

“Drink,” Bucky says, shoving the water at Steve will all the care he can muster. “You’ve been—you’ve been asleep a while.”

Steve slants a curious glance at the IV in his arm. His body rejects feeding tubes and anything more complicated. Bucky overheard more conversations between doctors than he ever wanted to, and it was only the reluctance to leave Steve’s side that stopped him from breaking a few jaws to put an end to the repulsive blend of wonder and _curiosity_ in their voices.

Steve drinks the water in slow, measured sips, much like a man who knows exactly what situation he’s in. He doesn’t let go of Bucky’s hand, not even once he sits up and sets the water aside.

“Hey,” Steve says again, smiling now, eyes so soft that Bucky has to look away. “How long?”

“Two days. Almost three now.”

“Huh.” Steve tilts his head to the side, then closes his eyes tightly. “Hm. Not bad. Could be worse.”

Bucky doesn’t mean to, but it must hurt, the way his grip tightens on Steve’s hand. Steve hisses but when Bucky tries to yank his hand away, he doesn’t let go, holding on with surprising strength.

“Sorry about that,” Steve says before Bucky can even open his mouth. “I always forget it’s bad for people who care. And you always took it the worst.”

There are a million things Bucky can say to that but not a single sound makes its way past his lips.

_You’re wrong_ , he could say. _I’m not him_.

In the end, he doesn’t get to say anything at all because that’s when a nurse peeks in and lets out a startled exclamation at seeing Steve awake, and Bucky has no choice but to flee in the room in the ensuing deluge of white coats.

-

Less than six hours after Steve wakes, Stark has him moved to the med-wing in the tower. Barton and Romanoff remain in the hospital; his injuries weren’t as severe as Steve’s, but he heals slower, and he can’t be moved just yet. Bucky is unashamedly glad that it’s just him and Steve. His thoughts are too loud in his head and the presence of anyone except Steve grates.

Stark leaves them mostly alone. He’s doing something related to the mission that went wrong—chasing down a leak from what Bucky could piece together. He should care more; it’s Hydra, they _want_ him, and that was his worst fear all along.

But in trying to get Bucky, they got Steve instead, and Bucky’s realizing that his own priorities have shifted irrevocably.

Steve seems to find nothing amiss. He still sleeps most of the time, and he’s not happy about being in any kind of a medical environment, but Bucky asks him to stay, and he does, smiling acquiescence in an indulgent way like he’s doing Bucky a favor by keeping his healing body confined to bed.

It’s infuriating, Steve’s lack of concern for himself.

It’s infuriating, and it shouldn’t be. Bucky shouldn’t care. His attention should be on Hydra. He should be running or he should be glad that Steve was as willing as he predicted he would be to throw himself at Hydra to protect his people.

These are thoughts that ran through his mind when Steve was lying unconscious in the hospital, but Bucky couldn’t let himself focus on them then because Steve _wasn’t waking up_ and nothing else mattered, and god, that says enough, doesn’t it?

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

It takes Bucky a few seconds to realize that he’s the one who spoke. Steve, who just staggered his way from the bathroom to the bed and only lets Bucky help him with palpable reluctance, blinks at him with wide, too-blue eyes. The expression turns sheepish a second later.

“Yeah. Sorry, it’s just—old habits, sometimes. S’like I get injured and revert to that five-foot-nothing punk with too much to prove.”

Bucky needs to replay that in his head a few times, completely bemused, before he understands that Steve’s talking about letting Bucky help him walk.

“No,” he snaps, sharper than he should, than he even intended to. “Not—not this. Fuck, Steve, you ran _towards_ Hydra.”

“Ah.” Steve looks down at his lap for just a second before raising his head and meeting Bucky’s eyes with a smile. He doesn’t seem surprised. “Nat told you, huh?”

“Steve!”

Steve reaches for him, expression tender and a little pleading, and Bucky’s too weak to stay away. He lets Steve take his hands in his and curls his fingers around Steve’s, holding on firmly even as his body goes taut with furious tension.

“I’m sorry you had to worry,” Steve says, body language screaming earnestness. “I never want that, Buck. But what I did, I’d do it again if I had to.”

Bucky makes a sound that’s not quite human, hissing an incoherent curse. In response, Steve raises their joined hands to his mouth and kisses the tips of Bucky’s fingers, closed lips brushing each fingertip without a care that half of them are metal.

And something inside Bucky unclenches in spite of himself.

Steve lowers their hands to his lap and smiles gently at Bucky.

“You’d do the same for me,” he says.

Bucky’s world briefly comes to a standstill. He opens his mouth.

 _No_ , he could say. _No, I wouldn’t because I’m using you, because I knew you’d do this, and I wanted a shield and knew you’d tear yourself apart to save me._

He almost says all of it, that it didn’t start with love or even lust, just convenience, that he had Bucky Barnes’s face, and Steve loved Bucky Barnes, and he wanted to use that love.

He looks Steve in the eye—in those fucking blue eyes that look at Bucky like he’s the world—and he keeps his fucking mouth shut.

Because it would kill Steve. The truth—it would kill him.

It wouldn’t matter that it’s real now, that it’s love and lust and everything that Bucky didn’t want to feel but couldn’t resist when Steve looked at him and touched him and loved him like he was the truest thing in the world. It wouldn’t matter that Bucky only feels real when Steve’s near him, that he thinks Steve made him real.

None of it would matter because Steve would blame himself for not knowing and he would never forgive himself and it would kill him, it would, and Bucky would follow him because he _can’t_ , not without Steve.

He’s some unholy amalgamation of James Buchanan Barnes and the Winter Soldier, and he’s maybe half a person, but every inch of that person is caught up in Steve, twisted and tangled into the being of him. And Bucky doesn’t care, he doesn’t want to escape, he just wants Steve. He wants this, the life they’re building.

“Clint and Nat were my responsibility,” Steve continues, oblivious. “I’d do the same for you. I’d do more for you—you’re—you’ve always got me all twisted up, sweetheart.”

“I asked you,” Bucky finds himself saying, a little numbly, “a long time ago. I asked you if you were ever with him. With Bucky Barnes.”

Steve sucks in a sharp breath, expression morphing into one of shock. He pushes it aside after a few moments, a blend of confusion and trepidation taking its place.

“You did,” he murmurs.

“You said no,” Bucky says. “You said you wanted to be but you never told him.”

“I did.” Steve just sounds lost, eyes wide and worried. “Buck, honey, why are you—”

“I think he wanted it too.”

Flashing images, haunting flickers—a boy with golden hair and a knobby spine, a man with the face of a god and large, gentle hands. Nothing solid for Bucky to hold on to, only blue and gold and a strange, sharp yearning.

Dreams of a dream.

But he knows. He feels it too; he _knows_.

“I think he loved you.”

“Bucky,” Steve chokes out.

“I do too.”

Steve’s expression is the kind of heartbreak that still sings with joy, and Bucky’s heart is pounding on his sleeve.

“I love you, I do,” he says. “But I’m not him, Steve.”

Steve reaches for him, and Bucky’s too weak not to go to him even though he thinks he shouldn’t. He ends up kneeling on the floor, arms draped over Steve’s lap, staring up at his face like he’s begging for benediction. Steve cups his face with shaking hands, holding Bucky like he’s precious.

“You’re you,” he says. “You’re Bucky Barnes.”

Bucky starts to shake his head, but Steve stops him gently with a finger on his lips.

“Not the Brooklyn kid I knew and not the soldier I let die—”

“You didn’t—”

“I did,” Steve says, suddenly fierce, eyes bright and blazing, though he softens just as quickly. “I did. And you’re not him. I know. But Buck, I’m not the man I was before the ice either.”

“It’s different,” Bucky whispers, desperate.

Steve gives him a shaky smile. There’s grief in his eyes, and Bucky doesn’t need to ask who he’s mourning now.

“I know.”

Steve tugs him up, more suggestion than any real force, but Bucky rises like a marionette on strings, and it’s only the stark awareness of Steve’s injuries that keep him from climbing into his lap. He stands, instead, between Steve’s legs and lowers his head to press his forehead to Steve’s.

“I love you,” Steve says. “ _You_. This person here with me. Everything you are and everything you’ve ever been and will be.”

They’re seductive words, the promise in them a siren call, but Steve doesn’t _know_.

And he never will. He can’t.

Bucky wonders if Bucky Barnes, the man who fought and died for Steve, would begrudge him this love. Does it even matter?

“I love you too,” he says, burying his face in Steve’s hair, breathing in days’ worth of grime and sweat. “Stop doing stupid shit. It’s me Hydra wants. Stop putting yourself in their path.”

“They’re not touching you except over my dead body.”

“No,” Bucky hisses, harsh and vehement, arms protective over Steve’s hunched form. “No. Together. They come, we’re fighting together.”

Steve’s breath falls on the hollow of his throat, a hot, rushed exhale. His hands are on Bucky’s waist, holding tight like he’ll never let go.

“Okay,” Steve says, thumbs slipping under Bucky’s shirt to touch bare skin. They rub back and forth, gentle comfort. “Together.”

-

A week is all it takes for Steve to bounce back like he didn’t go and get half his body wrecked. He wheedles his way out of the med-wing long before that, by masterfully wielding his genuine assholery, which works on Tony, and widening his damnably blue eyes pitifully, which works on Bucky.

Even after Steve’s back on his feet and throwing punching bags around like they’re made of hollow silicon, their floor has more visitors than is typical. Bucky hits his limit on human interaction much faster than Steve, but it’s still more than what he could do a year earlier. It’s a strange way to realize that he has a life that he likes, people who could be his friends if he’d just let them. He tells Steve that, and Steve’s answering smile is blinding. He kisses Bucky, and Bucky feels alive.

He and Steve are—they’re good.

They’re real. Bucky’s real.

-

There are missions. There are always missions.

Where Steve goes, Bucky follows. He stares at him through crosshairs and wonders whether the Soldier would have pulled the trigger, if Hydra wanted Captain America dead quietly and not in a grand production. He can’t imagine it. Sometimes, grey cityscapes blur into green and white, memories of another life that shimmer and vanish before Bucky can grasp them.

The Avengers like to joke that Steve as acquired a shadow. Bucky tunes them out or demonstrates the dexterity of his left hand by flipping them the bird. Steve just pins them all with what Sam calls his Dad America face, which works to some extent on the others but just makes Bucky want to drag him into a semi-private corner.

He gives in now and then, and Steve lets him too, and if Bucky conveniently forgets to turn off the comms while getting fucked against a half-crumpled wall, then turnabout is fair play.

Stark looks a little green in the aftermath, Romanoff won’t stop smirking, and Sam looks just about ready to ditch the whole lot of them, so it’s worth it, really, even if Steve damn near faints from embarrassment.

The missions don’t always go so well; there are people they can’t save, what Hydra would call collateral damage but dulls the light in Steve’s eyes every single time, even though he never lets it show except when they’re alone. That’s a privilege too, Bucky thinks. Steve doesn’t show his weaknesses easy, but he turns to Bucky like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and Bucky finds that he’s exceptionally possessive of Steve like this, a little bruised and bent, not broken but willing for a moment to lean on someone.

-

In December, they demolish a Hydra base. Blows it up with half the personnel still inside. It’s just Steve, Bucky, and Natasha for this, and they’re all quiet in the aftermath, grim-faced but satisfied.

The pleasure that curls in Bucky’s chest as he watches the flames devour everything is sharp and vicious. There was a Chair in the facility. Steve’s eyes flashed when he set eyes on it, but all he did was hand over the shield to Bucky and stand to the side, watching Bucky wreck it.

The ride home is quiet.

Bucky calms down in the Quinjet, adrenaline draining out, leaving him shaky and tired. But Steve, sitting beside him, seems to get more and more wound up with every passing minute. Bucky lays a hand on his thigh, fingers digging into tightly clenched muscles, and Steve lets out a ragged breath. He turns his head and buries his face in Bucky’s hair. He must smell like sweat and soot, but Steve drags in greedy gulps of air before dragging his face down Bucky’s throat, nuzzling into where neck meets shoulder.

A frisson of heat jolts through Bucky’s exhausted body.

He tilts his head to the side and winds his fingers into Steve’s hair, sighing when Steve noises aside the collar of his suit to get to bare skin.

“Natasha will see,” Bucky warns half-heartedly.

“M’not doing anything,” Steve says, his words undermined by his mouth open and hot against Bucky’s skin.

“Wait till we’re home and you can do anything you want.”

Steve growls, the sound vibrating up Bucky’s neck. There’s a graze of teeth, and Bucky tightens his grip in Steve’s hair, pure reaction rather than any kind of warning. But then Steve pulls back, just enough that his face is buried in Bucky’s shoulder than his sensitive throat, and Bucky’s the one left breathing hard and aching for more.

“Asshole,” he whispers, yanking at Steve’s hair before soothing over the hurt.

Steve bites at his shoulder, and Bucky can’t even feel it through the padded fabric, but his flesh remembers the sting of Steve’s teeth with perfect clarity. His gut tightens and cock warms in interest. He swats at Steve because that’s a wiser course of action than riding him then and there.

“Home,” Steve says, his voice retaining that rumbling edge. “And I’ll give it to you.”

Bucky shivers and spreads his legs, just a little, which is a mistake because Steve curves one huge hand around his thigh, fingers resting on the inner side, perilously close to his cock. That’s the sight Natasha is greeted with when she walks out of the cockpit.

Bucky could move away or nudge Steve aside, but Steve’s body is still tense, coiled with something more than lust, and anyway, Bucky doesn’t give half a shit about what anyone sees. Natasha shakes her head, but she’s smiling and even gives Bucky a salacious eyebrow wriggle before she goes on her merry way to do god knows what, abandoning Bucky to Steve’s dubious mercies.

-

He spends the rest of the flight entertaining scattered fantasies of Steve’s hands and mouth and cock, but then they land and Hill’s there, arms crossed and mouth set into a tight line, and Bucky resigns himself to a debrief that will drag for double the time it needs to. Steve seems no less displeased—maybe more, which is unlike him because even at his most destructive, Steve’s all about proper procedure and accountability to rare handful he trusts. But he spends most of the time scowling at everything and anything, tone polite but curt, and when Natasha and Bucky are dismissed, presumably so Hill can try in vain to chew Steve out, those blue eyes meet Bucky’s and blaze bright in silent promise.

“I like him better like this,” Natasha says apropos of nothing, seconds before Bucky has to exit the elevator.

“What?”

She grins at him, and if she’d tired from the day’s pyrotechnics, it doesn’t show.

“He’s more human after you’ve come around,” she says, and the doors open before he can question further. “I like it.”

Bucky blinks at her until the doors close and she vanishes from view. He replays that brief exchange in his mind as he wanders around their floor, which always feels too silent without Steve breathing somewhere in it. He contemplates and disregards dinner, drinks juice, and strips as he goes, leaving bits and pieces of armor and arms across the rooms.

He steps naked into the shower, ears peeled for any sound of Steve returning.

But Steve can be quiet when he has to be, the water’s loud in Bucky’s ears, and he’s _distracted_ , so when he steps out wearing nothing but a towel around his shoulders, he startles to see Steve sitting sprawled on the bed, watching Bucky like a lion might watch a gazelle.

That look hits him like a punch to the gut.

“Hey,” he greets, voice a croak. “Hill tear you a new one?”

Steve hums noncommittally. His eyes are roving down Bucky’s body, a slow, hot gaze that leaves trails of fire where it lands. Bucky gives his hair one last pat and drops the towel. But he doesn’t go to Steve, not yet. He stands there, letting himself be devoured without a touch.

Steve’s still in his suit, and Bucky can still see the tension thrumming through him. It’s no secret that Hydra gets under Steve’s skin, stokes his fire into a raging inferno, but this is—this is new.

“Like what you see?” Bucky asks, when Steve seems content to just sit there and stare.

Steve’s expression softens a fraction but the hunger remains dominant.

“Don’t I always?” he asks.

Bucky gives in and walks over, sliding into Steve’s lap, pressing his clean, slightly damp body against his hard, dirty suit. That makes a strange thrill swoop through him, augmented by Steve’s large hands sliding up his back and his sides, roaming with intent.

“Show me then,” Bucky says, already breathless, always easy.

It’s a frenzy of movement; Bucky doesn’t have to do anything but cling to Steve and gasp when he’s slammed back-first into the mattress. Steve pins him with his whole wait, his bulky suits pressing into Bucky’s skin like a threat. There’s something perverse about the way it turns him on, cock filling up and mind going white as he wraps himself around Steve as best as he can.

“Fuck me like this,” he gasps, squeezing Steve’s biceps through the suit. “Just like this.”

Steve growls, the same sound he made in the Quinjet, harsh and animalistic.

“I’m going to.”

He fumbles with his pants, face pressed to Bucky’s neck, and Bucky wants to help, but he finds that he doesn’t have the brainpower to do much more than grope Steve over the suit and run hands through his lank hair. Steve smells like fire and sweat, and Bucky greedily gulps in the scent, not even resisting the way it all goes right to his cock.

Steve gets his cock out and raises his head to smack a hard kiss to Bucky’s mouth. Teeth sink into his lips, hard enough to draw blood, and Bucky’s body arches up, only to be pinned flush to the bed by Steve’s. Their dicks rub together, hard and hot. Bucky tears away from the kiss and licks the blood of his mouth. Steve’s eyes track the gesture religiously, a groan rumbling in his chest.

Bucky braces both hands on Steve’s shoulder and shoves, sending him toppling to the side with a surprised grunt. Bucky presents him with recompense soon enough, turning over and rising onto hands and knees, ass in the air the way he knows drives Steve crazy.

“Opened myself in the shower,” he says, watching Steve’s eyes darken until they’re nearly black. “Just get in me.”

These days, Steve doesn’t need much encouragement to put Bucky to good use.

He slicks himself up, fisting his cock fast and rough, a sight that makes Bucky’s mouth water. Steve makes a production of it sometimes, but not today. There’s an urgency in the air that’s creeping into Bucky’s blood and he knows Steve’s got it worse, that he’s shaking out of his skin. He settles behind Bucky and knocks his thighs wider apart. It almost makes him collapse on the bed, but Steve grabs his hips with those huge hands and puts Bucky where he wants him. His cockhead prods the rim, always bigger to feel than to see.

“Breathe,” Steve says, and that’s all the warning Bucky gets before he’s filled in one, savage thrust.

His elbows buckle and he crashes face-first into the bed, too breathless to even scream. He whimpers when a hand fists in his hair and yanks it back at a sharp angle. He chokes on air. It feels as if Steve’s cock is there too, skewering him from gut to throat.

Steve doesn’t give him much time to adjust before he starts moving, setting a pace that would break an unenhanced human. It’s rougher than he usually is by several degrees, and Bucky doesn’t need to stretch his imagination much to have an inkling of what set Steve off to begin with.

“Bucky,” Steve grunts, ramming in deep at an angle that makes Bucky see stars.

“I’m here,” Bucky manages to say, forcing out the words a herculean task between the cock pounding away at his ass and the sharp curve of his throat. “I ain’t theirs, I’m here, I’m yours.”

It’s a risk, but it’s the right thing to say. What was left of Steve’s control breaks with an uncontrolled shout.

He lets go of Bucky’s hair to grab his hips with both hands, and then he _moves_ , screwing in deep like he wants to carve his presence into Bucky’s flesh, leave a raw, indelible mark.

Bucky’s face hurts, and he realizes he’s smiling, mouth stretched into a wide, toothy grin.

“Harder,” he says, soft, almost inaudible above the harsh, wet sounds of their Steve’s body slamming into his. “Make me feel it. Remind me I’m yours.”

Steve swears and hikes Bucky’s hips higher and does just that, letting go of the last of his restraint with a growl that tugs at Bucky’s gut. And he’s wet and open, but Steve’s cock is a monster of a thing, and nothing’s ever enough, it’s always too much. Bucky’s insides flare hot with pain and pleasure and sheer, pounding _pressure_ , and he doesn’t even feel it build, just comes with a shout, body clenching tight around Steve’s cock, again and again and again, milking him with every pulse of sensation.

It tears through Bucky, wrings him dry, but Steve’s still going at it, hard and messy, fucking Bucky through his orgasm and into the other side.

“Yeah,” Bucky chokes out, an encouragement Steve doesn’t seem to need. “That’s it, come _on_.”

The sound registers first, a sharp smack which is followed by a bright flare of pain. Steve digs his fingers into Bucky’s ass, kneading the cheek he spanked, and Bucky can’t get hard again this soon, but god, his cock tries.

“Again,” Bucky whines, blinking tears out of his eyes. “Again, hit me ag—ah!”

Steve doesn’t hold back, and fuck, he’s _strong_ , and no one’s made to survive this—Steve’s cock pounding into them while his hand rains down blows that throb like molten fire. Bucky cries out with each, right until he can’t, until he’s keening into the pillow, until even that turns into sobbing breaths as wet as the tears sliding down his cheeks.

Steve fucks him and spanks him for what feels like hours; time dissolves into light and sensation, Bucky writhing like a live wire, clutched in Steve’s grip and split on his cock, nowhere to go and nothing to do but take it, every grinding thrust and searing blow. He comes again, cock jerking painfully into the sheets, but it’s not a release, just another thing to drown in.

He's begging, he realizes at some point, pleas falling frantic from his lips, and Steve never stops because Bucky’s begging him not to stop.

And then he comes too, shoving in deep with a force that jolts through Bucky and coming in waves of heat that fill him up and drip out of his loose, sloppy hole. Come trickles down his thighs, lines of warmth that are almost soothing compared to the fierce burn of his ass.

Bucky whines through gritted teeth when Steve pulls out. He collapses beside Bucky with a soft, gutted noise, and Bucky somehow finds the strength to move his thoroughly used body and turn to Steve. He reaches for him, and Steve reaches back, blue eyes bright and wet in the few seconds their eyes meet. Then Steve screws them shut and makes an enthused attempt to burrow into Bucky’s skin, trying in vain to fold over six feet of muscle into the hollow of Bucky’s throat.

“Ssh,” Bucky says, running shaky fingers through Steve’s hair, seized by a tenderness that threatens to unravel him. “It’s alright, Stevie. Ssh.”

Steve’s breath falls hot and hard on Bucky’s skin. Bucky gently leads him downwards, and Steve follows the touch with the sweetest noise, moaning contently as he buries his face in Bucky’s chest and stays there, pressed close to the beat of his heart.

They’re a mess; Steve is still in his suit and Bucky is covered in bodily fluids and throbbing all over from pain. But he feels no urge to get up or nudge Steve into stripping. It’s better to lie here, watching Steve mouth at his skin and breathe a little slower, winding down from the sex and what happened before. The pain turns into a dull ache, present and inescapable but pleasant, something real and his. Theirs.

“Love ‘y,” Steve says, slurring the words into Bucky’s pecs.

“I love you too,” Bucky says fondly, sifting through golden hair that’s clumped together with dirt and sweat.

Steve makes a quiet, pleased sound and settles more comfortably against Bucky. He’s already half-gone, Bucky can tell. Stereotypes aside, neither of them is the sort to crash right after sex, but today’s been a long day. Bucky’s wide awake though. That’s fine. He’s content like this, watching Steve drift, features smoothening out as his death grip on Bucky eases into a gentler hold. The sight makes him protective and possessive, filled to the brim with the urge to stay beside this man forever and rip apart anything that tries to take him away.

And he can. He’s got the strength for it now. If nothing else, he’ll die trying, and that’s fine too.

Steve falls into a deep sleep, and Bucky lies there holding him for a long time.

He doesn’t check how long it’s been when he extracts himself gently from Steve’s slack arms, but the state of his body gives him a good idea anyway. He limps to the bathroom, hissing when each movement wakes a series of little aches all over his body. His ass is a throbbing mass of pain, inside and out, and when Bucky cups one cheek with his left hand, the cool touch of metal feels both soothing and searing.

He stops in front of the bathroom mirror; he doesn’t mean to, but an accidental glimpse of his reflection arrests him.

He looks like hell. His face is sharp and sallow, with tear tracks on his cheeks and red-rimmed eyes. There are bruises all over him—a lurid hickey on his throat, dark fingermarks on the curve of his hips. He turns to the side, just enough to see the angry red skin of his ass.

Bucky touches the mark on his throat. It’s right next to where his pulse beats to the rhythm of his blood.

He cups his ass again, hissing at the sensation. He drags that hand over to his hips, awkwardly trying to slot his fingers over the marks Steve’s left. He runs the flat of his palm up his torso, pausing with his fingers brushing the bruise on his throat.

He curls his hand around his throat, gentle and loose, just to see. The gleaming metal is a stark contrast to his skin.

Bucky imagines Steve’s hand there. Squeezing tight. Leaving marks. Cutting off air.

He wouldn’t mind. Steve can hurt him. Own him. Bucky chose that.

He’s Steve’s.

He decided to be Steve’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love hearing from you <3

**Author's Note:**

> Drop me a comment if you can <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [collab: voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361448) by [kocuria-visuals (kocuria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals)




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